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Margaret Atwood's LongPen: Or How to Go On a Book Tour Without Leaving Home.

Canadian icon Margaret Atwood has invented a device she calls the LongPen as a way to personally inscribe books for fans, and interact with them in real time, without leaving the house.

More than 40 authors, including Alice Munro, the late Norman Mailer and Conrad Black, have used it.

Basically it's an electronic signing implement that sends an Internet signal to another signing implement that exactly duplicates what the author is writing.

Webcams allow the author and the reader to see and speak to each other in real time.

It will revolutionize the industry, saving publishers millions of dollars in travel expenses for author tours, make writers lives much easier and give fans more opportunity to see and talk to their favourite authors.