Author 401(k): sell your signed books for 401K

An Abebooks bookseller is trying to get a quarter of a million dollars for a collection of signed Barack Obama books. To put this into perspective, a signed copy of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first book goes for 20K. L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought goes for $8.07 (but to be fair, this converts to 1 Bajillion Quagnars).

This begs a few questions: 1) what’s the point of a signed book, 2) what makes a signed book more desirable than an unsigned book, and 3) what’s so great about this particular signature?

I am a signed book nerd, and even I don’t know the answer to the first question. So, instead of waxing eloquent I’ll instead jump to question two. The short answer: an implied communion with the author.

While the internet has changed this relationship considerably, there is still a sense of proximity with a signed book that an unsigned book just doesn’t provide. It is sort of the hipster’s creed: “I have an investment in our community that runs deeper than yours, and this signed cd/book/indie film/celebrity organ proves it.” So really, it comes down to bragging rights among an already incestuous community of like-minded nerds. Once part of such a cloistered group, it takes a bit more digging to unearth the leverage necessary to become king of the nerds. With books, that leverage is often the signature. Or better yet, the signed first edition, first printing of a short run university press collection of essays that most people didn’t know about until it was printed posthumously within a series of collected works. “So as you can see, I deserve that nerd crown you poser,” says the vitamin D deprived book hipster, or bookster since I’m hip enough to make up words like that.

Don’t confuse my last question (what’s so great about this particular signature?) as a condemnation of the man’s importance. I am just questioning how his signature could possibly be worth $250,000 to anyone. Let me step back and make the obvious argument that booksters such as myself struggle to avoid: the words within the covers are the same damn words, signed title page or not.