I attended an authors’ conference a few years ago, and I have never been in a room with so many egos. One especially obnoxious person started every sentence with "Well, when I was commissioned to write a 10-part series on Cleopatra for NBC" or some such rubbish. Another person, having finished telling me how wonderful she was, said “And how about you?” As I opened my mouth to answer she turned not just her head, but her whole torso, in the direction of the room behind her — presumably to see if there was another potential victim of her self-publicity campaign.

All authors are egotists, I suppose. At least the presentations were honest: the speakers actually said: "I’m going to spend the next 45 minutes talking to you about myself and my works." Quite often, I attend educational computing conferences, and the speakers say, "I’m going to talk to you for the next 45 minutes about important developments in the field of X", and as the talk progresses the "I" word gets used more and more!