A BOOK SIGNED IS A BOOK SOLD and the LongPen™ provides autographs for more readers, in more places, in less time, and at a fraction of the cost of the traditional book tour. It's also a greener alternative to airplane travel.

Publishers and authors have long been searching for an alternative to the expensive and time-consuming book tour. Novelist Margaret Atwood, having done a few tours of her own, has invented a solution.

The LongPen™ is the world's first long-distance, real-time, real-pen-and-ink signing device. Operating over the Internet, it allows authors to interact with readers and sign autographs anywhere in the world without actually being there.

The LongPen™ comes with video conferencing, enabling live interactions between author, audience, and fans. Authors can read, take questions from the audience, and have an intimate one-on-one with fans while signing their books. This technology can also capture the on-screen interaction between author and fan in a digital video format. For a small fee (which goes to charity), fans can download the video file of their interaction with the author, which they can share with friends, family, and the world at-large through their own website, MySpace.com page, YouTube.com, or their cell phones, iPods, and other digital video devices. Advance media interviews can be conducted via the system. These features make the LongPen™ more than just a long distance signing device, but an all-in-one marketing machine.

The LongPen™ consists of two units. The Author End features a video screen, a bit pad, and a magnetic pen; the Book End includes another screen, a document holder, and an electronic arm holding the pen.

The units can be stationed virtually anywhere in the world and as far apart as necessary as along as there is adequate Internet access. Smaller cities not normally considered for publicity tours can finally be included. The Author End can be set up in an author's kitchen, a publisher's office, a hotel room … The Book End can be stationed in bookstores, record stores, concert halls, movie theatres, sporting goods stores … the possibilities are endless.

The LongPen™ provides publicity solutions for authors who are publishing in different countries at the same time, have limited time to promote, or cannot travel. It also offers an inexpensive way to connect authors with book clubs and to increase sales and exposure with an extended book tour.

Publishers pay a fee to belong to the LongPen™ Network to receive one Author End unit and purchase per-use packages (please see price list for details). Membership gives access to the Network of participating bookstores, provides downloadable event content, and an e-newsletter with publicity generating ideas, an upcoming events listing, links to titles being promoted, and more.

For more information, please contact Bruce Walsh, V.P. Marketing, Unotchit Inc. at 647-202-9393 or at bwalsh@unotchit.com