Authors can sign paper books, but not e-books

The rise of digital books could spell the end of book signings.
Author meet-and-greets have been a staple of the publishing industry. They establish good will between book writers and readers. Plus, they’re a good way to sell books.
Book lovers get a hand-signed memento from their meeting with an author. But with the rise of e-readers and tablets, physical books might be headed for the dust bin of history.
In 1985, I had dinner with author-historian-broadcaster Studs Terkel at a Chicago restaurant. My brother Paul, a doctor at a Chicago hospital, was treating his wife at the time. At the end of our dinner, Studs signed a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book “The Good War” for me.
The inscription reads, “For Pat – What a delightful companion – and I’m sure, a splendid journalist. Studs Terkel.” I still have the book and the memories.
For Black Friday this year, Barnes & Noble, nation’s largest retail bookseller, organized a massive signed-book sales event.
It offered 500,000 signed editions from more than 100 of today’s biggest authors. It made a selection available in every Barnes & Noble store nationwide. The authors included James Ellroy, Dan Brown, Rick Riordan, Clive Cussler, Jodi Picoult, Donna Tartt, David Baldacci, Ann Rice, Amy Poehler, George W. Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Is this a last gasp from a dying business or will physical books have many years left?
We shall see.
The answer has implications not just for the tradition of book signings, but all areas of our lives touched by books.
For instance, what’s to become of book shelves? Will people start putting other things to display on those shelves?
What about the expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? That could become as archaic as saying something sounds like a broken record. (The New York Times wrote about this issue back in 2010.)

Photo: A before and after photo of Stephan Pastis, author of “Timmy Failure: Now Look What You’ve Done,” signing more than 5,000 copies of his book as part of Barnes & Noble’s Black Friday signed editions offering. 

Ownership of music, movies and software slipping away

First it was physical media that was threatened by the shift to digital, now it’s ownership of entertainment and software.
Consider the music business. For decades, physical ownership of music ruled, first with LPs and cassettes and then CDs. Then Apple changed the game when it launched the iTunes download store in April 2003.
Fast forward to today and iTunes sales are dropping as consumers switch to ad-supported and subscription streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify.
Why own the music when streaming is so convenient? You can access your favorite music from multiple devices without the hassle of finding your copy.
In the movie business, DVD sales are down as more consumers sign up for Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and other subscription streaming services.
Once again, with streaming, people don’t have to load their personal copy of a video into a consumer electronics device. They just search from a menu and hit play.
Another benefit of streaming video vs. DVD is not having to slog through all those trailers, ads, piracy warnings and menus you get before you can actually watch the video you want. With streaming, it starts when you hit play.
However, a drawback is the likely disappearance of special features like deleted scenes, movie documentaries and director commentaries.
Computer software also is shifting from buy-and-own to monthly subscriptions. Microsoft, Adobe Systems and other software companies now offer to rent PC software applications as opposed to buy-upfront licensed software. This is part of the shift to cloud computing.
Amazon.com even has a subscription electronic book service called Kindle Unlimited.
It all sounds like a good deal, but consumers might end up paying more for software and entertainment content this way.
Also, if you don’t own something, you have less control over it. Some of the content you like could just disappear when a service loses the rights to it.
Plus, you usually need an Internet connection to access your content.
As with all new things, there are tradeoffs.