Margaret Atwood’s Assault on Book Collectors
This from the London Book Fair site:
"Sunday 5 March 2006
Margaret Atwood launches The LongPen(tm), by UNOTCHIT Inc
Margaret Atwood, whose generation more or less invented the ‘international book tour’, has now invented a device that allows authors to autograph their books for people anywhere in the world – from the comfort of their homes, or indeed from wherever they happen to be. Rumours of The LongPen(tm) have reached the media, and following two recent successful invitation-only tests in Canada, the official launch is confirmed to take place at the London Book Fair, 5 March 2006. A press conference/demonstration will take place within the Fair in the morning, followed in the afternoon by a transatlantic signing to bookshops in Canada and the USA. "The Tent" will be the first book ever to be signed publicly by The LongPen(tm)"
I plan to attend this launch in London and boo loudly.
Ms. Atwood’s LongPen is designed, it is assumed, to address a concern among authors that book sellers and collectors are cutting their grass by flipping editions that these authors have painstakingly deigned to sign. Now, she, and other like-minded authors (Dean Koontz does not do book signings), don’t have to dirty themselves with the business of actually meeting their fans. They can simply squirrel away, signing undisturbed in the comfort of their own anti-socialness. They might even be able to make a bit of extra money by charging more for these ‘ signed’ copies…
I can hear it now (actually you can hear it now) ‘….no, no, no… I AM personally signing your book, really…It’s just that I’m not doing it IN person…a pen is a tool…so is my ingenious little device…what’s the big difference? It has interactive image and voice. The author will be there, in real time. So the exchange is with the author, not the signing device. This is a wonderful win-win. You’re getting your precious signed copy…I don’t have to waste time getting a sore wrist talking to your sorry boring ass…"
I don’t object to Atwood squeezing out those parasites who attend readings and get dozens of books signed only to sell them for a profit. And okay, Joe Sprott from Gilead Saskatchewan might be able to talk with authors, and to have books signed that he might not otherwise without having to trek into the big city. What’s really annoying however is that come March, collectors will have a whole new category of genuineness to worry about …in person signatures versus impersonal, ‘long penned’ signatures. There better damned well be some kind of identification attached to Atwood’s pseudo-signatures that’s all I can say.
Postscript: With this response, if I’m Atwood, the public version, I sqeeze my sphinter and shudder with glee. I have millions of fans. Who gives a Cat’s Ass about alienating a few collectors? I’ve been feted everywhere short of Sweden. The Long Pen redraws and underlines my favourite character’s untouchable status as the world’s most glorious gadfly.
