Former media baron Conrad Black may not be able to travel, but he's not going to miss a Toronto book signing for his Richard Nixon biography.

Black says he'll be using Margaret Atwood's invention, the LongPen, to sign autographs at a Toronto bookstore on Oct. 15.

Black is the author of The Invincible Quest: the Life of Richard Milhous Nixon, published this May, a comprehensive biography of the controversial U.S. president. The book comes out in the United States in October.

Black will be able to speak to autograph-seekers via video conference during the book signing.

He will be at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. He is confined to Palm Beach or Chicago by a court order as he awaits sentencing on his conviction of mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

For a man unable to travel here, Black has done his best to be seen in Canada.

He has returned to writing a column in the National Post and appeared Tuesday in a humorous skit on CBC-TV's Rick Mercer Report.

Black previously wrote biographies of U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis.

Atwood has patented and set up a Toronto firm, Unotchit, to market the LongPen, which allows an author to write on an electronic pad to sign books in a remote location.

With files from the Canadian Press