Starting from scratch ... Margaret Atwood attempts to use the LongPen at last year's London Book Fair

Yesterday afternoon I went to the last day at the annual London Book Fair in Earl's Court, where I had a chat with Anita Shreve while she signed my copy of her new book, Body Surfing - despite the fact that she was sitting in her dinning room in Massachusetts and it was 9.30am her time, 2.30pm mine.

Margaret Atwood is the inventor of the LongPen, the world's first long distance autographing device that claims to provide a time-saving, cost-effective, and carbon neutral way to take the book tour to places it has never gone before. After last year's meltdown at the LBF, the LongPen is back and the virtual ink is flowing. It has been getting rave reviews and converting sceptics across the globe, so I wanted to check it out. So far this week Dean Koontz, an author who is renowned for never travelling, has been signing from his living room in LA while Mark Haddon has been signing fans' books in Toronto while being stationed here.

But back to Shreve and me. I arrive 15 minutes before the signing is due to commence, and the video conferencing unit reveals a technician sitting in Shreve's home in Massachusetts, doing some final tech checks. On comes Shreve and up to the screen steps Margaret Atwood, on hand to monitor her contraption. Shreve declares: "This is amazing!" The guy our end interrupts to ask the author what page she'd like to sign on, and she stops him with a "That one!" when he flicks to the correct page.

My biggest fear of this futuristic contraption was that is was going to be less intimate then meeting the author in the flesh. Not so. Shreve is telling a lady in front of me the story behind the painting hanging on the wall beside her, while Atwood assures me that everyone was very complimentary about her kitchen at her latest LongPen signing in Canada.

Up comes my turn and a very relaxed Shreve chats away and signs my name. And this is the really cool bit: as I watch her write the words, they immediately come up on to a small preview screen. She asks me if she's spelt my name right - she has - and then the ink pen hovering above my copy of the book begins to write. As a first time user of the LongPen, she's as excited about the whole thing as I am, and asks me: "Is it writing?"

And there it is, the only way you'd know that it had been signed via the LongPen is because it says so: "To Henrietta, via the LongPen, Anita". Apart from that it's perfect, and I've even had a chat with the author in her own home.

So, it's green, it's intimate and it's an experience in itself. Catch the gizmo in action as the virtual Dean Koontz appears in Waterstone's in June and Alice Munro signs in Edinburgh at this year's book festival.