Kindlegraph

I’ve added My Particular Friend to the Kindlegraph service, which attempts to solve the problem of how to sign someone’s Kindle copy. Unfortunately it’s not a great solution to the problem, but it is essentially a free service (with a caveat to be explained later), and it would be churlish of me to belittle it.

However I can’t help but express my disappointment, even though I doubt the limitations are in any way the fault of Kindlegraph. I had thought when I first heard of this service, that an author’s best wishes and signature would be inserted into the actual copy of the book as a extra first page. Instead the service is more like a way for users to collect autographs of authors and keep them in an album on their Kindle, but not inserted into the actual copy of the book.

This would be OK, except that the process whereby an author signs is extremely cumbersome unless she happens to own a tablet, which I don’t. Instead I must either use my mouse to scrawl my signature into an input box or else affix a signature that’s really just my name set in a script font. And as for the inscription itself, my only option is to type and choose either a script or typewriter-like font.

So what the book lover will receive is a separate document, stored somewhere on their Kindle, with “Hope you enjoy my book, Dan!” and “Jennifer Petkus” in a script font or an unintelligible squiggle that resembles your signature on those grocery checkout terminals, only worse. It would be great if Kindlegraph allowed one to attach a signature saved in a file or paste in a graphic. I can create a passably good signature with a mouse in PhotoShop if I let the document take over the whole screen. And if I could paste that in, it would be great. (One trick to signing in the Kindlegraph form page is to zoom the page. It makes the input box a lot bigger.)

But it is free for me the author to sign. The service makes money because you can choose to buy the book from the Kindlegraph website, and yes, this means someone can request an autograph without having bought the book.

Unfortunately the requester might incur a small fee as is explained here. My guess is the fee is pennies or maybe even fractions of a penny, but from my understanding, I think it’s impossible to avoid paying this fee unless you don’t want to store the autographs on your Kindle (if you choose to only view them on the website), which to me is sort of the point.

Sorry to complain about this; I’m still looking forward to my first request for an autography. I’m just disappointed that what you’ll get in return might disappoint you.