Buy Signed Books?

skylark said:

Maybe the authors did a booksigning there?

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Could be this. I signed a box of books for a local book store a few years back.

I went to a Ray Bradbury signing a couple of years ago. Since the place was packed they restricted signings only to people who purchased one of his books that day. I did so... then asked him to sign my battered old copy of Martian Chronicles.

I do think it's fun to have copies signed by authors, but I wouldn't specifically buy a book because of that. I do have a signed paperback copy of Hyperion I found in a used book store - it was super cheap and nobody had ever noticed it was there. Score!

I'll buy if I think they are going to be an investment. One purchase I made in 1999 turned out to be a good one. I got the book, limited edition, numbered and in good condition in a sale for £15. I've seen it on ebay for over £150.

Bibles signed by the Big G are two a penny - now the real investment is the First Folio of Shakespeare signed by him with all the variable spellings of his name. They are at least a penny each!

Shakesbear said:

I'll buy if I think they are going to be an investment. One purchase I made in 1999 turned out to be a good one. I got the book, limited edition, numbered and in good condition in a sale for £15. I've seen it on ebay for over £150.

Bibles signed by the Big G are two a penny - now the real investment is the First Folio of Shakespeare signed by him with all the variable spellings of his name. They are at least a penny each!

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The (financial, collectible-market) value of a book definitely depends heavily on whether the author is well known and/or "important." Maybe not a lot of people know who Lee de Forest was (when it comes to science/engineering history in school, one is lucky to hear about Edison and Bell), but my autographed copy of "Father of Radio" is worth a good bit.

Then there's Max Cleland's 1980 book "Strong at the Broken Places"that I've seen a bunch of copies in thrift stores around Atlanta, and MOST of them have a signature or even a short inscription. The guy's a quadriplegic since his service in Viet Nam, so it seems he was spending most of the time with his one good hand signing books. I recall selling both a signed and an unsigned copy on Amazon in the $10-$15 range.

I also have "The Burning Stone" by Debora Turner Harris, a college friend of my sister's that I had Deborah sign when she visited my sister (I heard them talking about her book, and I actually drove to the bookstore, bought it and brought it back to my sister's house to have her sign it). It's inscribed "Psonya Bdass." Looking online, it looks like she's written and cowrote several other published novels since then, but as far as I know (I'm not a big fantasy fan) she hasn't made a big name for herself in the field.

One reason to buy signed books (when they first come out), in addition to supporting the author and such, is it's a little like a lottery ticket. If the author becomes the next Stephen King, an autographed book WILL be worth a lot. If it's a book ten or more years old in a used bookstore by someone you've never heard of, it's likely worth no more than an unsigned book.