Not that signing a book is anything like being kissed (unless of course, you are kissed during a signing), but the Atwood Patented Booksigner seems to make as much sense and promise to be as much fun as a machine that would kiss you on the cheek, thus reproducing a kiss on the cheek from a celebrity you fancy, who's a thousand miles away kissing a screen, which then issues you with a slip of paper informing you that you had just been kissed by the person in question, for, as Ms Atwood puts it, posterity.

I'd rather just not be kissed than walk away with my "You were just AutoKissed by..." slip, just as I'd rather not go on a signing tour than use an Atwood machine. In my opinion it's something that should be personal, intimate, faintly silly and include all the spelling mistakes, the illegible bits and the ink-blots. (Signing that is. Not kissing. Unless you're the sort of kisser who produces ink blots.)

Wenn Autoren zu beschäftigt sind oder sich zu alt fühlen um stundenlang Bücher zu unterschreiben, ist das zwar bedauerlich, aber nicht zu ändern. Unter diesen Umständen möchte ich Margaret Atwood auch nicht zumuten mir ein Buch zu signieren.

NB: Bei Neil Gaiman würde ich übrigens Tintenkleckse beim küssen gerne in Kauf nehmen :-)