At book events, bibliophiles typically wait in line to present books to pen-wielding authors, but as readers increasingly turn to electronic-book devices like the Kindle, it raises the question of whether book-signings may one day go the way of the inkwell.

A recent reading in Manhattan at the Strand bookstore by David Sedaris, whose most recent book is “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” may have offered a glimpse of the future. A man named Marty who had waited in the book-signing line presented his Kindle, on the back of which Mr. Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, “This bespells doom.” (The signed Kindle was photographed, but its owner’s full name is unknown.)

Asked if she had any inkling if the practice of having Kindles signed is common, a spokeswoman for the online bookseller Amazon.com, which makes the device, declined to respond, but it has been happening at least intermittently for more than a year.

Image David Sedaris signed a Kindle. Credit... Maja Thomas

In May 2008, for instance, Holly West attended a reading at a Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, Calif., for the novelist Jennifer Weiner. Since she was halfway through Ms. Weiner’s “Certain Girls” on her Kindle, Ms. West had the author sign that.