Writer hits paydirt with Palin biography

An Alaskan writer called Kaylene Johnson could hardly believe her luck this weekend. Nearly a year ago, she was approached by a Seattle publisher to write a biography of a virtually unknown politician, Alaska's newly elected governor, Sarah Palin. The book - Sarah: How a Small Town Girl Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on its Ear - was published in April and until Friday morning was doing about as well as Johnson's other titles, Portrait of the Alaska Railroad and Trails Across Time: History of an Alaska Mountain Corridor.

Then the Republican presidential candidate John McCain decided - after just one meeting, we now know - to make Palin his running mate. Epicenter Press was suddenly inundated with orders for the book - reportedly 40,000 in a day. "We decided right off the bat that we better go ahead and do a paperback version," said Kent Sturgis, co-owner of Epicenter Press in Kenmore, north of Seattle. "We were producing copies of this paperback about 14 hours after the announcement, and they'll all be shipped on Tuesday."

Although Kaylene Johnson lives on a farm just outside Wasilla, the suburb of Anchorage where Sarah Palin began her political career as mayor, it was Sturgis who spotted the politician. He met her at a fundraiser in 2006, before her election as state governor. "No matter what you think about her politics," he said diplomatically, "she's an interesting and an unusual politician."

Johnson needed only 160 pages to chart Palin's journey from high school basketball player to state governor, via beauty queen and - as this clip from Anchorage television shows - rather hesitant TV sports reporter. Exploiting the instant headlines that greeted Palin's arrival on the national stage, Sturgis has astutely retitled the book Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down.