Digitally Embedded Hand Written Book Signature - How I Did It

In my recent post I wrote about my selling exclusive copies of my book that includes a hand written, signed personal message. So how did I do it? Well first of all I was inspired by a virtual book tour I viewed on youtube a few months ago, where the author (can't remember who now) said the only downside to conducting such a tour is that customers couldn't purchase a signed copy. That didn't work for me. I say where there is a will, there is a way and I believed that in this day and time, with the technology we have at our disposal, I would find it. And find it I did, and best thing about it, is that it is very cheap to implement by simply using a pc graphics tablet. I purchased one for £16/$23 on Amazon and got to work on practicing writing with it. It took a bit of getting used to, but finally I was able to write out the uppercase and lowercase alphabet as well as my signature into a font creator template that I downloaded from yourfonts.com. It cost $9.95 to have the site generate my copyrighted personalized font in my own hand writing, which I then installed to the fonts directory in my computer.

Hardest part over, I opened my image editor (I use GIMP) and wrote out my personal message with my newly created copyright font and saved it as a jpg image. It was now possible to insert the image of my message into the document of my manuscript and save it as a pdf which I uploaded to my Lulu account. Voila! I effectively created a unique selling point, a huge incentive for people wanting a copy of my book to purchase through my Lulu store. Of course this is better for me as an independent author, as it pays higher royalties than Amazon and all the other online book retailers out there.

This can also be used as a method of creating custom messages on your ebooks for your customers at no addition cost (aside from your initial investment).

Here's a sample of what I mean:

Click image to visit my official bookstore

 Yup, that there is a sample of my messy handwriting all right!

This wasn't a tutorial so much as it was about putting the idea of the possibilities this has out there. If you have any questions, post a comment and I'll do my best to answer. ;)

'Let Sleeping Gods Lie' - Exclusive Signed Copies!

Yup yup! Necessity is the mother of invention, well ya girl is the mother of practical application. Those of you who know me personally can attest to the fact that when I decide I want to get something done, I will be sure to find a way to do it for free or minimal cost. This mindset was what made it possible for me to publish my books on close to zero budget, but that's another story. From websites to book trailers, I designed and created mine myself. The effort required has been extremely intense, as much of what was involved required me to learn new software, how to create images from scratch etc., but being that I have a reputation for being a geek, that was all perversely fun for me anyways.

So what has that got to do with signed copies of my book? Well because of how much I do, I needed a way that people could purchase pre-signed copies of my book via my shop on LULU.com So of course, I figured out a way to include a personally hand written message on the original file! Yup, now every copy purchased through my bookstore will include a signed personal message. So let me break this down for you:

Through my official bookstore, you can purchase exclusive copies of 'Let Sleeping Gods Lie' that includes a digitally embedded, signed personal message written by my hand, on sale for less than the RRP. These signed copies cannot be purchased anywhere else that sells my books!!

Click here to visit my store at lulu.com/n9neformation to purchase your copy now!