Cannot produce messages remotely: No partition metadata for topic test due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException

I successfully ran the QuickStart tutorial locally on a single EC2 machine. I stopped everything running on the server, deleted the logs in /tmp, and added the single line "advertised.host.name=MY.EXTERNAL.IP" to server.properties. (Port 9092 is indeed allowed through the firewall and responding, so no problem there.)

I then restarted the server and successfully created a topic as per the QuickStart tutorial.

Then, I ran the producer in exactly the same way as in the QuickStart tutorial, except on a remote machine:

bin/kafka-console-producer.sh --broker-list MY.EXTERNAL.IP:9092 --topic test

This generates the following error:

WARN Error while fetching metadata [

{TopicMetadata for topic test123 -> No partition metadata for topic test123 due to kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}

] for topic [test123]: class kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException (kafka.producer.BrokerPartitionInfo)

See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30880811/kafka-quickstart-advertised-host-name-gives-kafka-common-leadernotavailableexce/30919109#30919109

I've spent several evenings trying to get this simple Kafka setup to work but am stuck. It seems like it should work.