Signature Books
Signature Books is an American press that focuses on Utah, Mormonism, and Western Americana. It was founded in 1980 by George D. Smith and Scott G. Kenney and is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Smith-Pettit Foundation is the main owner.
The company began as a Mormon-related press without ties to the LDS Church. Its first book, Saintspeak by Orson Scott Card, appeared in 1981. Signature Books now publishes about eight to ten titles a year, covering western and Mormon history, fiction, essays, humor, art, and documentary history. Its catalog includes diaries of early Mormon leaders and biographies of important figures, along with studies of well-known Mormon theologians.
Some Signature Books titles have sparked controversy, challenging orthodox LDS views. Over the years, several authors published by Signature Books left or were excommunicated from the LDS Church. The press has had conflicts with FARMS, an orthodox Mormon scholars’ group. For example, Grant Palmer’s An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins drew sharp reviews from FARMS, and Signature Books publicly disputed some of FARMS’s critiques. In 1992, Signature threatened to sue FARMS over reviews describing its writers as anti-Mormon.
In 2004, John Hatch criticized FARMS in a speech on the publishers’ behalf. The tensions lessened after FARMS was merged into BYU’s Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship in 2006; the FARMS Review was renamed Mormon Studies Review, editors changed in 2012, and in 2018 ownership of the Review passed to the University of Illinois Press.
Today, Signature Books continues to publish works on Mormon and Western history and related subjects, maintaining its role as a platform for scholarship and literature in these fields.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:17 (CET).