Sarah Palin's book is bestseller before going on sale

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Sarah Palin's upcoming memoir is already the top bestselling book on the shopping sites of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, a month and a half before the book goes on sale.

The memoir from last year's Republican vice-presidential candidate, titled "Going Rogue: An American Life," is scheduled for release on November 17, four months after the book deal was announced and much earlier than planned.

The memoir, which became available for pre-order this week, has been in Amazon.com's top 100 for three days, and just replaced the latest novel from "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown at the top of the list.

"It obviously bodes well that there's so much interest and excitement," said Tina Andreadis, spokeswoman for HarperCollins, the book's publisher and a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Andreadis declined to project the book's ultimate sales potential.

It is typical for highly anticipated books to jump in the bestseller ratings as soon as they become available for pre-order, said Amazon.com spokeswoman Sarah Gelman.

For example, Brown's book, "The Lost Symbol," topped the list immediately after becoming available as a pre-order in April, she said.

"The Lost Symbol" is now the second-best-selling book on Amazon.com, followed by "Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government" by conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

Palin, 45, the conservative former governor of Alaska, became a household name last year when Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain chose her as his running mate in the 2008 election campaign.

During the campaign she was criticized for being inexperienced and for saying her foreign policy experience was strengthened by Alaska's geographic proximity to Russia.

Palin resigned as governor in July, a move Andreadis said gave her more time to write and contributed to the book being released before the original spring 2010 timeline.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller; Editing by Patricia Reaney)