Along with Fame Comes the Spoils: Sarah, the book and author

A good story from the ADN on the only author to write a bibliography about Sarah.

Some excerpts:

Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down" is Johnson's third book. The others are Alaskana -- a coffee table book about the Alaska Railroad and a history of the Kenai Peninsula. They sold fewer than 10,000 copies and expectations for "Sarah" were equally modest. The initial printing was 8,000.

But that was in April.

A week after Palin's big announcement in August, 80,000 new copies of "Sarah" hit stores.

By Saturday, 350,000 more were on the way from Tyndale, a Christian publishing house.

(...)

The book pulled her into a high-stakes conflict she wasn't prepared for. With so little known about Palin three weeks ago, friends and strangers by the hundreds sought her out. She was featured as an expert on every major cable news network and interviewed by numerous grocery store glossies.

It was heady at first, but the thrill faded. Social situations get awkward. Nasty e-mails arrive in her inbox. Even her writing group, which includes people across the political spectrum, feels a little weird though they've been friends for years.

"Everything's become a little more passionate and personal than it was in the past," she said.

And the journalists keep calling with questions about Palin's hair, and her glasses and her lattes. They want analysis or gossip like Johnson's a government professor or part of the paparazzi. They ignore the fact her book ends in 2006 with the governor's inauguration.

It is unfortunate that the author publishing a book prior to Sarah being selected as the V.P. to McCain, has to put up with the "nasty e-mails", and the journalists who continue to call her.