Frankly, no, in my opinion. Unless it is on a large contract where I am receiving a nice commission, or to purchase a home or other large items where someone else is getting a nice fat check – then it is certainly worth it!  Yet several hundred people paid $25 more to get a signed copy of my new book, Wine Sense.  I ran a preorder campaign through Publishizer to raise funds to finalize and print the book and it was a great success.  One of the reasons for the success was people’s willingness to pay $50 for a signed copy instead of $25 or even pay $100 to be acknowledged in the book and on our websites.  This really helped raise funds much more quickly than just selling the book would have.

Now that the book has been delivered and I am signing so many copies, I feel bad for my friends who bought the book, but not the author-signed copy of the book.  It would be easy to just provide them a signed copy, even though they did not pay for it.  After all, it is only a signature to me that takes ten seconds to write; it’s easy to do and especially worth it as my signature to me is not worth $25.  But is was to others who when given the choice willingly and gladly paid an extra $25 to do so.

Therefore to keep integrity and let the marketplace work the way it is meant to work, I just could not provide signed copies to those who did not pay for it, even if they were close friends I wanted to acknowledge.  Doing so would invalidate and devalue the choice made by others.  So while it was difficult to do, I did not sign copies for those who did not order it.  And I will not now unless it is for a larger event such as a book launch function or store book signing where there are many copies flying out the door and the having me as author there and signing is all part of the event.

But I was surprised at how much it hurt not to be able to sign copies for friends who might have been ‘expecting it.’  But they had the same choice as others and it was their choice not to pay for it.  This was one of the many issues I did not think about when doing the preorder campaign that I will if I do a similar campaign in the future.  Commitments I make during the preorder campaign leave a legacy and ongoing commitment which must be honored.  I am smarter now about such issues, but it still hurts not to be able to give my signature away for free when it is so easy to do so!

Steve Shipley, author of Wine Sense, available now!
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