Sarah Palin's Book Tour Heavy On The Battleground States

Sarah Palin's Going Rogue Book Tour will take the 2008 vice presidential candidate to some key political battleground states, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa. Kathy Kiely and Bob Minzesheimer, writing for USA Today, opine that the former governor's road trip which begins next week "looks more like a whistle-stop campaign" than a book tour:

Of 20 stops that have been announced through Dec. 7, only nine are in counties where Republican John McCain beat Democrat Barack Obama in last year's presidential election.

"Publishing a book is like a political campaign," said Peter Osnos, who has published a number of well-known politicians' books through his imprint, Public Affairs. "She is going to go out there and stump for it."

Osnos points out there's a precedent for politicians using book tours as launching pads. The publicity tour for Obama's second book, Audacity of Hope, "became a huge part of his political ascendancy," Osnos said.

Like everything Sarah Palin does, her book tour will be unconventional. None of the interviews she has scheduled to promote her memoir are with print publications, and none of the stops for book signings on her tour will be in big cities:

Instead, the former Alaska governor will hit small- and medium-size cities starting Wednesday, mostly in the South and Midwest. She'll be making two and sometimes three stops a day, traveling in a bus painted with the cover of her book, says Tina Andreadis, a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, Palin's publisher.

"These are the places where she had her biggest fans and where we think we will sell the most books," Andreadis said.

And sell books she will. Going Rogue is #2 on Amazon.com's Bestsellers list behind only Stephen King's new blockbuster, and it has been in the top 100 for 43 days based solely on pre-release sales. Publisher HarperCollins has ordered a first printing of 1.5 million copies.

Sarah Palin will be making some big city appearances to promote her book, however. She will hit the television studios of Fox News and ABC in News York for major interviews, and her first in the series of interviews will be in Chicago for the Oprah show. Also, former Gov. Palin will venture inside Washington D.C.'s Beltway to speak to the Gridiron Club early in December.

Our updated Going Rogue Book Tour schedule is here.

- JP