When the word came out Friday afternoon that presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was already the subject of a biography, and that Kaylene Johnson‘s Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down was rapidly climbing up the Amazon charts—at 6 p.m. Eastern Monday, after hitting the top ten over the weekend, it was still hovering just outside the top 20, and remained #1 in political biographies—one wondered: how was Epicenter Press dealing with the sudden demand?
“It was a wild ride for us,” publisher Kent Sturgis, the company’s only full-time employee, emailed Saturday. “Although we had watched for months as a surprising number of political bloggers touted Palin for VP, in my wildest dreams I never thought it would happen.” The company’s two phones were ringing off the hook all day—things got so bad Sturgis and his part-time staff had trouble getting a line free for outside calls. “We had 3,000 harcover copies in the warehouse Friday morning. They were sold by 10 a.m. We converted to a trade paperback edition and Lighting Source produced the first copy about 11 p.m. Friday night about 15 hours after the McCain announcement.” (Epicenter’s based in Washington state, and goes by Pacific Daylight Time.)
“Our advance for the trade paperback edition stood at around 40,000 by the end of the day Friday,” Sturgis continued, “thanks to the work of the Ingram Publishers Services reps. Ingram will begin fulfilling orders Tuesday.”