A robot capable of reproducing the signatures of authors – both living and long since deceased – is ostensibly used to speed up book fair signing sessions, though the gimmick factor cannot, of course, be
entirely disregarded …

Eugen Suman: “It’s not the digital section if we don’t have at least one robot. So here’s one that uses big data and consumer insights in a very creative way. It happened in Antwerp, during their big yearly book fair, and it uses a very local insight: people go there more to collect signatures from authors launching books and less to discover new books and authors. So www.bol.com, the online book store, in partnership with DDB Brussels, invented a robot that could sign any book with the exact same signature as the human author – and do it fast. That means that people at the fair could get the signature thing out of the way quickly and instead concentrate on actually discovering new books and new authors.”