WASHINGTON -- By now, nearly everyone with a television has seen the teases for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's appearance today on Oprah Winfrey's show.
And thanks to a sloppy stock clerk at an undisclosed bookstore, there have been plenty of leaks from Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue," which officially hits bookstores Tuesday.
The Palin publicity blitz has begun, and if it has elements of a political campaign, a Twitter feed and a top-tier rock band touring second-tier cities, well, that's by design.
Palin, who taped her appearance on Oprah last week, kicks off her tour Wednesday at a Barnes and Noble in Grand Rapids, Mich. She'll swing through small cities such as Fort Wayne, Ind.; Washington, Pa.; and Roanoke, Va. -- places where she had triumphant appearances last year on the campaign trial as Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate.
Palin is looking forward to visiting military posts like Fort Bragg, she wrote on Facebook, and "reconnecting with friends my family made last year on the campaign trail in different book signing venues."
So what's in the book?
There's some juicy campaign trail gossip, writes the Associated Press reporter who tracked down a copy of "Going Rogue" last week. Palin reportedly claims as much as $50,000 of the legal bills she amassed while she was governor of Alaska came from the vetting the McCain campaign did of her as a vice presidential candidate.
The book also "describes heart-wrenching anguish about her teen daughter's pregnancy playing out before a national audience," reports the AP.
There's also plenty of media bashing, according to an excerpt leaked to the Drudge Report Web site. Palin was barred even from talking to the reporters on her campaign plane, according to the excerpt of her book.
"By the third week in September, a 'Free Sarah' campaign was under way and the press at large was growing increasingly critical of the McCain camp's decision to keep me, my family and friends back home, and my governor's staff all bottled up," according to the excerpt on Drudge.
But in the same passage, she snipes about her interview with Katie Couric, saying a McCain-Palin aide urged her to do the interview because the CBS anchor had "low self-esteem."
McCain, asked whether he'd seen the book yet, said he'd received a signed copy on Thursday and would "be reading it with interest."
Already, the book is a best-seller. Publisher HarperCollins printed 1.5 million copies, and in a retail war unrelated to Palin, Amazon.com, Target and Walmart have slashed prices as low as $8.98 on the $28.99 hardcover version of the book.
