ThrillerFest - Digital Signing Devices

I absolutely loved this panel! The future for ebooks is pretty set in stone that they are here to stay... unless we have some alien intelligence shutdown our electronics devices, but that's for another post.

The two companies that came to talk were Autograpy (Tom Waters) and iDoLVine (Matthew Gibson and Margaret Atwood). While I feel more attached to Autography, I feel you should be checking both out depending on your needs.

Autography was born out of frustration with a huge digital industry and no way to personalize your titles. What is interesting is that you can create graphics like you would for your title page that are directed towards special events or even to spruce things up. This is also a great marketing device through being able to use social elements like Twitter and Facebook (hitting a button that *Likes* it stating "I just got a signed book from some big author on Autography).

The device brings the personal touch back to the industry that has been lost in book signings, and is cross-platform (providing epubs and .mobis). It is currently only available for use through an iPad app, but an Android app is in development for those tablets. The app costs you nothing, but you upload your titles to them you want to make available for signing and they do like Amazon (70/30) in royalties.

The coolest part of this is you can do either a sample with a signature, or a full version with a signature. If you send them a free sample, they can go back and get the rest later if they decide to purchase the whole thing! Talk about a hook. You can even do virtual book signings using Skype, uStream, or ooVoo.

In the event I did not make it clear: You upload your title to Autography - they do not go through Amazon, B&N, or any other distributor.

The only downfall I see to this is that you cannot sign previously sold titles from these other distributors, which makes sense since they are physically encoding your fresh copy in the final output format (epub, mobi, etc) with a jpg (or the like) image. It would be kind of hard to change the base code not having that copy of the title... but hey, you never know what they may develop! All things considered though, two thumbs up!

As for iDoLVine, while I favor the other product at this time when it comes to ebooks, this format allows you to sign things from across the globe as well - not only in eformat but also in physical things like books, ball caps, and shirts. Really, anything that is flat is fair game to sign.

Way back when, really not that long ago, but Long Pen started this digital signing revolution. It was being used by many top-notched businesses like Citizens Bank, mortgage companies, and other high security-high use brands. Now enter iDoLVine, an updated version of Long Pen. It works with DRM products as well as watermarked content, and everything is traceable and authentic. It's nice having that security and that range of items available for endorsing. This gives the author that much more that they can work with for give-a-ways.


My Take: Both are very interesting products that are a must to look into.