Palin’s memoir ready early

Stand by for Sarah Palin's memoirs: in a worryingly short time, only three months after resigning as Governor of Alaska, John McCain's Republican running-mate in last year's presidential race has completed her book.

Indeed it came so quickly that her publishers, the Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins, have announced they are bringing forward the publication date from spring 2010 to November 17 this year.

Palin worked with a collaborator, Lynn Vincent, editor of the evangelical magazine, World. Even so, the swift turnaround is bound to raise questions about whether Palin has much to say. "You'd expect a decent political biography to take a good two years minimum," said one of HarperCollins's rivals. "But then, whoever said this was going to be a decent political biography?"

HarperCollins have high hopes nevertheless and have announced an initial print-run of 1.5m copies. The book will be titled Going Rogue: An American Life.

As Slate.com proudly boasted yesterday, the phrase "going rogue" was first used in relation to Palin in an article published by the online magazine a fortnight before Barack Obama won the election.

"Has Sarah Palin 'gone rogue'?" asked John Dickerson. "For the last few weeks, Republicans inside and outside the McCain campaign have speculated about those moments when Palin and John McCain have appeared to disagree... Even on Team Maverick, a vice-presidential candidate's job is to agree with the candidate at the top of the ticket."

Perhaps Palin and Vincent will explain in their book how Team Maverick imploded. Or perhaps not. ·