Less About the Book, More About the Reader

When I asked my best friend, Carrie, for keys to her apartment, it was with partial love and altruism, and with partial greed and booklust.

Carrie lives just a few blocks from me, so of course it makes sense for us to be able to look out for each other. But she is also a book-lover, a librarian, and a long-time New Yorker. She’s spent years going to author readings around the city, amassing an extraordinary collection of signed first editions – everything from Jonathan Franzen to Jonathan Safran Foer to Amy Bloom. So when she handed over her keys, I looked her right in the eye and said, “Your grave won’t even be cold and I will be in here whisking away your collection of signed books and covering up that space like they never existed.”

Instead of drooling in envy, I can certainly focus more on building my own collection, and I plan on going to more readings when I’m finished school. But two years from now, will I even be using print books anymore? Will I even want to buy them just for the signature?

Seriously though, I don’t want some foolish autograph book like kids get at Disney World for signatures from the characters. And I certainly don’t want to ask Murakami to sign the back of my Nook.

Perhaps a picture with an autograph is the answer? Yesterday, The New York Times profiled the iPhone app Autography,  which bascially allows you to take a picture of yourself with the author; the author then signs the photo with a stylus, and a minute later the photo is inserted into your ebook. You can, of course, also post it to FB and whatnot.

Now, bringing this back to Carrie and our mutual agreement to trade books over each other’s deathbed, I doubt either one of us would be as excited for an ereader full of pictures of the other with famous authors, no matter how much we like each other.

In the end, this new format makes the experience less about the book, and more about the reader. I am with Murakami – I do not have a signed copy of his book.

But I sure will have a shizzly FB profile.