Last fall, Jeffrey Zaslow wrote a WSJ article about a farewell lecture by Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon professor dying of pancreatic cancer. Everybody started talking about the story, Pausch was all over the media, a video of the lecture was all over the web, and pretty soon Zaslow and Pausch had a book deal (rumored to hit seven figures) with Hyperion.
It seems the publisher may have underestimated the demand for The Last Lecture, though: As the DanNation blog observes, Amazon.com is already sold out, and won’t be getting more stock in for at least two weeks. “I’m only a novice observer of the publishing biz,” Dan says, “but either this means a) they went with a woefully inadequate first printing, or b) the book could be the second coming of Tuesdays with Morrie—which camped out on the NYT Bestseller list for 205 weeks. Or more likely, both.”
(photo of Pausch: Pam Panchak/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)