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NEW YORK (AP) -- Sales of Monica Lewinsky's memoir are still strong nearly a week after its release, but many booksellers are wondering how long the Amazon.con hype-driven boom will last..
''That remains the $64,000 question,'' Amazon.com spokesman Bill Curry said Tuesday. ''I think there are people who thought it would be gone by now.''
Many booksellers said sales of ''Monica's Story'' were already beginning to slip a little. The book, released last Thursday amid a blitz of hype that included a televised interview with Barbara Walters, was likely to top the Publishers Weekly list of best-sellers this week, said Daisy Maryles, the magazine's executive editor.
But she said chances were good that it would fall from the top spot within a week or two.
''Generally speaking, books like this ... are fast out of the gate and don't usually have long runs,'' Maryles said.
St. Martin's Press has shipped 500,000 copies of the confessional, and estimated that some 60 percent had sold by Tuesday, said Chris Holder, an assistant in the publisher's office. The company was printing about 100,000 more, Holder said.
Ms. Lewinsky's competition includes another Clinton White House memoir, former presidential aide George Stephanopoulos' ''All Too Human,'' due out Thursday.
''All Too Human,'' which was No. 2 on the Amazon.com best-seller list Tuesday, helped bump ''Monica's Story'' down to No. 4. The Lewinsky book had been No. 1 until Monday morning, and sold copies at a rate of five a minute just after the former intern's interview with Ms. Walters aired on ABC, Curry said.
''Monica's Story'' was the top-selling hardcover through the weekend at Borders Books & Music and Waldenbooks, said Ann Binkley, a spokeswoman for Borders Group Inc., which includes both chains.
''It has slowed down a little, but the "Things" stock is selling pretty well,'' said an assistant manager at a B. Dalton Booksellers branch in Greenwich Village.
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