Famous author, tired of book tours, will soon sign remotely

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

Washington (dpa) - Famous author Margaret Atwood, tired of long travels to publicize her work, plans to unveil a new device on Sunday at the London Book Fair that will allow her to remotely sign, in real time, her newest book for fans in New York and Canada.

Atwood will be signing copies of newly published The Tent - a short story collection - using the LongPen, a robotic arm that she first conceptualized, then founded a company for its development and production, a spokeswoman in her office said.

The author of The Handmaid's Tale, which was made into a film, and The Blind Assassin, which won her the Booker Prize, plans to use the LongPen to speak with fans in Canada and New York on a video screen, then sign the book with any special inscriptions using the robotic arm.

Atwood will be stationed at the Bloomsbury booth at the London Book Fair on Sunday, and will first test the LongPen to another booth at the fair, the spokeswoman said. The trans-Atlantic signings will be to bookstores in Guelph, Ontario, and New York City.

She thought of the idea during an especially taxing book tour in 2003, for her novel Oryx and Crake.

"I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this. Or of doing some of it'," Atwood wrote on the website of the company producing the device - Unotchit (pronounced "you-no-touch-it").

Ironically, at a time that writers worry about how electronic communications could erode the tradition of literature, Atwood backed the new invention because it allows her to sign books without having to attend book signings.

But the 66-year-old author insists that the device will not replace the tradition, instead allowing authors to sign in places they could not afford to visit otherwise.

"It won't be a choice between the author-in-the-flesh and the remote signing. It'll be a choice between the remote signing and nothing," she says.

The technology for digital signatures already exists, but the LongPen lays claim to being the first electronic device that allows reproduction of the signature on a book at a remote location in real time. Similar mechanical devices have allowed US presidents to produce multiple signatures within one room.