If you ever catch me signing books via the "Handmaid's Booksignamabob 2000," please find out where the hell I am and clobber me with something hard and heavy.
Secondly, if you are ever tempted to have your book signed this way, then shame on you. You might as well have all your books signed by Donald Rumsfeld.
A digital signature is a copy of a signature whether it's pushed via a real person ten feet away or a thousand miles. It still gets mutated into bits and spat out over there. I have no question that the resulting signature could be a "legal" signature in as much as a signature machine's signature is legal, but it's still pretty flaky, and smacks of a tiresome loathing for the author's "fans."
Finally, I'm pretty sick of authors bemoaning their "strenuous" book tours. Please. If you don't want to go on book tours then stop writing books. Or take a pay cut and tell your publisher to give the money to a young author who could use it.
Do you know how much of my advance I would give back if my publisher would send me on a book tour? All of it. You know why? Because when I go in to bookstores and I read my book, the damn thing just walks out of the door. People grab it. Three of the bookstores I've read at have entirely sold out of their stock. Did the bookstores under-order? Sure they did. But how could they know? They probably expected me to come in half-assed and under-prepared. And they probably expected this because me and my wife set up all of my very minor tour.
Did Atwood call the bookstores and arrange her own schedule? Did she stay with friends and relatives because the publisher couldn't/wouldn't pay for more than two nights in a hotel (two very nice nights, I might add, since they did, at least, do that). Was she so worn out after her tour that she decided to hang it up? To give in? To sign off?
No. She "invented" a signomotron.
I don't blame Ms. Atwood. Not really. It's probably easy to take your success for granted. But I hope someone will find her and bonk her on the head with something hard and heavy. Maybe she'll come to her senses. Maybe she'll simply sit at home and do nothing but write. My guess is people will buy her books whether she signs them and tours or not. (And a fan's saved copy of their interaction with the author strikes me as rather pathetic. Anyone else feel this way? Anybody who would want such a thing is not probably that interested in the book so much as they are brushing up against what they perceive as "fame." Sigh. Fine. I guess. Still, pretty pathetic.)
Anyway. I've gone off here, haven't I?
Maybe this whole thing is a joke.
Is it a joke?
Please say it's a joke: Atwood adds 'inventor' to CV.
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If you ever catch me signing books via the "Handmaid's Booksignamabob 2000," please find out where the hell I am and clobber me with something hard and heavy.
Secondly, if you are ever tempted to have your book signed this way, then shame on you. You might as well have all your books signed by Donald Rumsfeld.
A digital signature is a copy of a signature whether it's pushed via a real person ten feet away or a thousand miles. It still gets mutated into bits and spat out over there. I have no question that the resulting signature could be a "legal" signature in as much as a signature machine's signature is legal, but it's still pretty flaky, and smacks of a tiresome loathing for the author's "fans."
Finally, I'm pretty sick of authors bemoaning their "strenuous" book tours. Please. If you don't want to go on book tours then stop writing books. Or take a pay cut and tell your publisher to give the money to a young author who could use it.
Do you know how much of my advance I would give back if my publisher would send me on a book tour? All of it. You know why? Because when I go in to bookstores and I read my book, the damn thing just walks out of the door. People grab it. Three of the bookstores I've read at have entirely sold out of their stock. Did the bookstores under-order? Sure they did. But how could they know? They probably expected me to come in half-assed and under-prepared. And they probably expected this because me and my wife set up all of my very minor tour.
Did Atwood call the bookstores and arrange her own schedule? Did she stay with friends and relatives because the publisher couldn't/wouldn't pay for more than two nights in a hotel (two very nice nights, I might add, since they did, at least, do that). Was she so worn out after her tour that she decided to hang it up? To give in? To sign off?
No. She "invented" a signomotron.
I don't blame Ms. Atwood. Not really. It's probably easy to take your success for granted. But I hope someone will find her and bonk her on the head with something hard and heavy. Maybe she'll come to her senses. Maybe she'll simply sit at home and do nothing but write. My guess is people will buy her books whether she signs them and tours or not. (And a fan's saved copy of their interaction with the author strikes me as rather pathetic. Anyone else feel this way? Anybody who would want such a thing is not probably that interested in the book so much as they are brushing up against what they perceive as "fame." Sigh. Fine. I guess. Still, pretty pathetic.)
Anyway. I've gone off here, haven't I?
Maybe this whole thing is a joke.
Is it a joke?
Please say it's a joke: Atwood adds 'inventor' to CV.
