How to sell the unwritten

Tod Goldberg passes along several side-splitting book-signing anecdotes, including this one which is so great I won't even excerpt but instead reproduce in its entirety.

A man walks up. He has the look of a man about to ask me to read his novel, which is in his trunk this very moment.

Man: You wrote these books?
Me: I did.
Man: I'm looking for some advice on writing books. Your brother says you're a professor. Are you a professor?
Me [glaring at Lee as he slinks away like the vile homophobic twat that he clearly is]: I am.
Man: What do you teach?
Me: Botany.
Man: Really?
Me: No.
Man: Well, see, here's the thing. I don't know how to finish my book or get it sold.
Me: What's it about?
Man: It's set in present day and it's about a Holocaust survivor who is chasing down his Nazi captor.
Me: He must be chasing him down very slowly.
Man: What do you mean?
Me: Well, even if both of them were newborns at the time, they'd be in their sixties now.
Man:
Me:
Man:
Me: My point being that you might want to rethink that present day angle.
Man: I've done a ton of research. I know all the things there are to know. I know [goes on for about 30 minutes detailing what he knows]. So how do I sell it?
Me: Wait, wait, wait. Have you actually written any of it yet?
Man: No.
Me: Not a word?
Man: No.
Me: That might be your next move before trying to sell it.

I'm starting to think that if dealing with idiots (or, more bluntly, the f-derivative that Tod has coined) like these are the price of being a published author, maybe it's not so bad being unpublished.