Signed books: is this real?

Wow, this book has been signed by the author!  It must be worth a lot!

Not so fast, is that a real signature?  A real signature can vastly increase the price on a book while a forgery can ruin a good copy.

Hemingway signatureOne of the most common errors people make is mistaking a printed signature for an actual signature.  These are pretty common, especially with super popular authors.  It’s purely decorative.  The easiest way to tell if it’s a printed signature is to turn the page and run your fingers over it.

There’s often a little bleed through onto the back of the page, so look though the page at a light source.  If it’s uniformly dark, it’s probably printed.  If it’s irregular, odds go up that its  a real signature.  If there’s actual bleed through of the ink in irregular spots, its almost certainly a signature.

The other trick is to run your fingers over the signature, front and back.  First run your fingers flat, then make claws with your hands to run your nails over it lightly.  Run your fingers over a printed section, then over the signature.  A printed signature will feel uniform.  A signature will have some indentations if if was done with a pointed pen.  A felt tip pen signature will be smooth but will have bleed spots you can see from front and back.

If the ink used in the signature is a different color than the rest of the text, this also makes it likely it’s a signature.

Great, you have a signature!  But is it the author’s signature?

One of the quickest things to check is print date vs author’s death date.  If it was printed afterward, it’s definitely not real!

Wikipedia often has a sample signature for well known authors on the page about the author.  For example, the page on J.D. Salinger shows off what Salinger’s signature is supposed to look at.  Not every author has a representative signature, but it’s often a good first stop for well known authors.  A little searching on the internet should turn up lesser known authors signatures as well.  Looking through multiple signed copies on book selling sites can also give you a good idea of what it’s supposed to look like.

If it looks NOTHING like the author’s signature, it’s obviously a poor forgery. However, it probably won’t look quite like the sample one either. Authors often sign big stacks of books at a time or sign them at an awkward height or on unsteady surfaces.  If it doesn’t exactly match, it may still be the author.  You’re looking for something that looks similar, but isn’t an exact clone.

One that looks EXACTLY like the representative samples you’re seeing online should  raise a red flag.  Print out the signature and lay it over your suspected signature.  Put a flashlight behind the two pages.  If it lines up EXACTLY, you may have a forgery.  Printing out a copy and using carbon paper to trace on the signature isn’t exactly hard.  Trace over the signature, then go over it with a pen and you appear to have a real signature.

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When eyes are not enough- scouting with multiple senses

When confronting a mountain of books a pile can often become so overwhelming that it doesn’t seem like there’s anyway to deal such a huge pile of items.  How will you ever look through it all?

Don’t simply look, rely on your other senses.  Overreliance on sight means you may pass over treasures or simply be unable to complete a survey in the available time. A wealth of data can be gleaned about a book from your other senses, all processed together at once.  Reading each title isn’t necessary if you use you other senses to determine which books to focus your attention upon.  You don’t even have to notice all these details consciously.  When you process them all at once, you will be able to pick out books with great speed, seemingly by magic.

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The wonderful, wacky world of fanfic

Think of any relatively book, movie, or TV show.  There is fanfic about it somewhere.  Go type it into a search engine “Your Book of Choice + fanfic”.  You’ll get results.


Fan fiction is basically additional material produced by fans of a media title.  The internet has made it easier than ever to find fanfic of whatever you want.  The newest hottest blockbuster movie, TV show, or book tends to be the easiest to find.  These are of course produced without the original creator’s consent and often take characters in directions that weren’t intended.  New characters get added.  Old annoying characters get killed off in the ways fans dreamed about and never got.  Characters finally hook up with the person they’ve been making gooshy eyes at for the entire series .  Bromance blossoms into actual homosexual romance.  There’s sex scenes that would never get past censors.

Due to the overflowing abundance of fan fiction on the internet, it often seems like a modern online only phenomenon.  But it’s hardly new.  Mainstream publishers snap up fan fiction of books that have fallen out of copyright.  There’s at least 20 books put out by mainstream presses that are spin off’s of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice that are sequels, prequels, retellings from a different perspective, or just downright weird retellings.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is one of the best known current ones.

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