Sarah Palin’s co-author

Whenever I so much as mention Sarah Palin, it provokes a shark-like feeding frenzy of her fans and her haters tearing into each other. The woman inspires so much raw emotion on both sides that it’s exceedingly odd, in my opinion. But I do not intend to talk about ex-governor Palin, as such. I want to talk about her upcoming book, which won’t be out until November 17, but its pre-orders have already made it a best seller. The link says it’s #2 on Amazon, but just now when I checked, it’s #1. The publisher has ordered a print run of 1.5 million.

Why I’m interested in this is that I know the co-author, Lynn Vincent! She was a colleague of mine at WORLD. She’s a good writer and a good person. I hope she is credited with a by-line. I also hope she gets a cut of the royalties.

I hope she is not a ghost-writer, who did all the work but gets no credit. Professional writers have to do that sort of gig sometimes, but I think it’s wrong for someone to take credit for someone else’s ideas. Lynn’s involvement is well-known, so that doesn’t seem to be the case here. But this happens all the time with books “by” celebrities. (As in that NBA player, upon being asked by a reporter about something in his book, said that he disagreed with his own book. He obviously hadn’t even read his own book.) But politicians do it too, as do big-name religious leaders.

Oh, the book is entitled Going Rogue: An American Life. If you too want to pre-order the book, you can do it here by clicking the link. If you don’t like Sarah Palin, do it for Lynn Vincent.