London eBook Fair

The highlight (so far) of the technologically-oriented London Book Fair seems to be author Margaret Atwood's retooling of her virtual book signing device, UNOTCHIT. You no touch it--cute, huh? That name was too confusing, perhaps, because she's hauled it out a year later, calling it The LongPen. The long pen-- cute, huh?

Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood introduced her device for signing books electronically from afar. The LongPen, as she calls it, records handwriting digitally, then zips the information across the world to be emulated by a robotic arm. From the stand of Bloomsbury Books, her publisher, Ms. Atwood chatted by videolink to a conference room in the fair complex, and then signed her books from a distance. The device malfunctioned at first, and during the 30 minutes of tweaking, Ms. Atwood was philosophical about improving the lives of writers, who 'will have other mortifications, such as the one you just saw.'

Wired has a LongStory on it, but fails to mention the debut a year ago at which the device also failed to work saying only that "Atwood's democratic device underwent the most universal of experiences on Sunday: the last-minute technical hitch. Its first-ever public demonstration, at the London Book Fair, was delayed as project director Matthew Gibson and his crew engaged in some frantic tinkering."

And I still think we need to jury rig a connection with this virtual signing device to Kevin Smokler's virtual book signing tours in order for authors of virtual books to have book signings, too! I mean, let's be techie all the way. After all, this is Read an eBook Week. [booksigning]