The book signing at Realm Makers was a great event. Over a dozen authors, all fabulous. I even bought a print edition of the Avenir Eclectia anthology, although I almost never buy print books anymore, because six of its contributing authors were there.
But among the remaining authors, I either had their books in print back home (Jeff Gerke, Kathy Tyers) or I had their books in the Kindle app on my iPad (Robynn Tolbert, Rebecca P. Minor, and a bunch of others). So how do you get an e-book signed?
I had heard there was “an app for that.” There are a couple, actually, but they both require the author to have signed up beforehand: Authorgraph and Autography.
Many iPad apps allow you to write or draw with a stylus. Unfortunately, the Kindle app is not one of them. Here’s my workaround:
- Open the book in the Kindle app and take a screen shot of the cover.
- Copy the photo and paste it into an app that allows for drawing.
- Use the stylus to write on or under the photo.
(I have to confess, Samsung has us totally beat here. The Galaxy tablet’s built-in photo editor lets you draw on your screenshots.)
I used Notability, because that’s what I already had installed. Since then, I found Adobe Ideas, so that’s what I’ll use in the future. Notability worked pretty well, although it was sometimes fidgety when people wrote over the photo.
That worked for the e-books, but what about the print books I chose to leave at home instead of hauling them to St. Louis and back? Jeff came up with the solution for that one: “Take a picture of the cover, and I can sign that.”
So I turned to my friend Jeni, who had a stack of Jeff’s books from the conference bookstore, and borrowed her copy of Plot versus Character. I don’t think Jeff will mind my telling you that he was a little geeked out about signing a book on an iPad. I was totally geeked out myself.
Glad I could help. =)
This is a fantastic idea!
Thinking I need to sign up on those links you posted. Also glad you didn’t post my autograph because I was too focused on how to use a stylus to notice my terrible writing. 😉
[…] How to sign an e-book […]