Signature Books

Signature Books is an American press specializing in subjects related to Utah, Mormonism, and Western Americana. The company was founded in 1980 by George D. Smith and Scott Kenney and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is majority owned by the Smith-Pettit Foundation. In the late 1970s, Scott Kenney decided there needed to be a Mormon-related press that didn't have ties to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among those present at Signature Books's inception were George D. Smith and Scott Kenney, assisted by a board of directors composed of historians and business leaders: Eugene E. Campbell, Everett L. Cooley, David Lisonbee, D. Michael Quinn, Allen Dale Roberts, and Richard S. Van Wagoner; and an editorial board consisting of Lavina Fielding Anderson, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Davis Bitton, Orson Scott Card, and Jay Parry. In 1980 Kenny and a few investors created Signature Books. In 1981 they published their first book, the satire Saintspeak by Orson Scott Card. Several of Signature Books' publications have won awards from the Association for Mormon Letters, the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Mormon History Association, the Mountain West Center for Western Studies, and the Utah Center for the Book. Signature Books produces from eight to ten books a year, which deal with topics of western and Mormon history, fiction, essay, humor and art. Among these are the diaries of Mormon leaders such as Joseph Smith, William Clayton, Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff, L. John Nuttall, Anthon H. Lund, John Henry Smith, Rudger Clawson, B. H. Roberts and Reed Smoot. Signature has also published noted studies of well-known early Mormon theologians such as James E. Talmage, B. H. Roberts, Orson Pratt, Parley P. Pratt, Brigham Young, John Widtsoe, and award-winning biographies of significant early Mormons such as, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, as well as a biography of thirty three of the plural wives of Joseph Smith. A number of books produced by the publisher related to Mormon history have been considered controversial.