For certain collectors (and I am one of them), few things will enhance a book’s value more than having the author hold the book in his hand and sign it, especially if you witness the signing and have it inscribed to you personally.  Unfortunately, for most collectors, unless you are willing to settle for just the release of your favorite authors’ new books, you are stuck with the secondary market, with all its pitfalls and prevalent fraud.  With this in mind, I thought I’d share a few tidbits of information on the subject I have learned along the way.

If you want to be certain that your signed book is genuine, you have three options:
Buy a signed limited edition, which is guaranteed by the publisher.
Pay to have the signature authenticated (a little less certain).
Buy the book directly from the person who witnessed the signing or, more risky, from someone who can trace the book back to the original signing (provenance).

As the first two of these can be quite expensive, and the third depends upon a trust factor, most collectors pretty much have to rely on their own judgment.

Let’s start with a truism that can help you identify the obvious fakes.  Being human and subject to human frailties, it is almost impossible for anybody to sign their name exactly the same way, so real signatures will vary from book to book.  At a large signing, due to fatigue, a signature at the end may have little in common with one at the beginning. An author’s signature will also change over time, due to age, vanity, expediency, or any number of other factors.  Two examples come to mind.  Scott Turow’s signature, which was at least partially legible before ‘Presumed Innocent’ made him famous, has degenerated into a scrawl which has caused more than one dealer to describe it as ‘initialed by the author.’  At the other end of the spectrum, Jasper Fforde started signing his books as ‘JASPER’ (all uppercase letters).  As the volume of signings increased with the popularity of his books, he decided that the uppercase signature was too time-consuming and made a conscious effort to change it, experimenting with several different versions until he settled on the one he uses now.  As a result, many dealers promote the original uppercase signature as ‘more valuable.’  Perhaps this may be a self-fulfilling prophecy…

Knowing that no two ‘real’ author signatures are identical can help you immediately identify the two most common ‘fakes’: the pre-printed signature, which has been with us for decades, and the autopen signature which is relatively new.   Most collectors and dealers are familiar with the more widely known pre-printed signatures such as Twain and Alcott, but how many know about Barbara Bush’s book ‘Memoirs’ or Rush Limbaugh’s ‘See I Told You So?’  By comparing the signatures in just two of the same books, it is easy to see that they are absolutely identical in all respects, even to the placement on the page.  If you are technologically literate, you can ‘capture’ the signature in a graphics program and overlay them, or at least display them side-by-side.  The same is true of autopen signatures.  Because they are made by a mechanical device, they are identical, although page placement may vary (the same page may not be used or the book may not be placed in the same position during the ‘signing’).   Be especially aware of books with labels stuck on the dustjacket saying, ‘autographed copy,’ which appear in bookstores which did not hold an author signing (not to be confused with legitimate signings at a store which has the author sign extra copies for sale later).  These are often signed by autopen and are primarily used on popular books for which the author doesn’t have the time or the inclination to hold a signing.  A prime example here is Hillary Clinton’s ‘It Takes a Village.’  As she was First Lady at the time of publication, it was not considered ‘politically correct’ for her to have any book signings (although she did sign a few at public and private appearances).  How, then, did several thousand ‘signed’ copies appear on the shelves of bookstores?  You guessed it -- an autopen.  And not just one; it has been reported by people who follow these things that three separate autopens were used to produce the volume needed, each one just a little different.  I, myself, have found multiple copies of each of the three (and only three so far).

This brings us to the most insidious of the fakes - the ‘light box wizard.’  The concept is simple - it’s called ‘tracing’ (and you’ve probably done it yourself for less sinister purposes).  Construct a small box with a strong light inside and a piece of glass or Plexiglas on one side.  Find an authentic signature by your author of choice and place it on the glass.  Now open the book to the selected page and location, place it over the signature and turn on the light.  Carefully trace the signature, now clearly visible through the book page and voila -- a perfect ‘flatsigned’ book!  If you are very thorough, you can even trace a short inscription, making the signature look even more legitimate (the favorite is ‘Best wishes’).  As these ‘signatures’ are made by a human hand, with attendant variations, it is a little more difficult (but not impossible) to identify them.  Since most crooks are greedy, it is unlikely that they made only one copy of a valuable signature, which explains the proliferation of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King ‘signatures.’  Therefore, you can often find more than one book by the same author being offered by these crooked dealers.  While the lines in the signature may vary slightly, the size will not.  Both the vertical and horizontal size will be exactly the same since it was traced from the same original.  Also, being traced, the size and slant of each letter will be pretty much the same and the crossed t’s and dotted i’s will be in the same place.  Look for ‘wavy’ lines and starts and stops (identified by a portion of a line not quite aligning with another or a heavier ink concentration in the middle of a line).

While not 100%, the above will help eliminate the more common ‘fakes’ in your collection (or dealer stock).  The real problem is the forgery by a very competent forger.  Most amateurs (or crooked idiots) produce a signature which is almost immediately identified as a forgery by even relatively inexperienced collectors and dealers, and can often be identified by the wavy lines and starts and stops referenced above.  The expert forger has been known to fool even the most experienced authenticators, and remains a problem.  Fortunately, most forgers who have taken the time to produce such an expert forgery are not going to waste that time and effort on -- to them -- ‘trivial’ books.  On the plus side, if the forgery is that good, chances are you’ll never know it anyway.

So, if your signed copy by your favorite author passes the above tests and it’s not in the higher end of the collectible  market, the chances are very good that it is real.

Copyright 2004, 2005 by Keith Wease