FAIRBANKS — If you hate hearing about Sarah Palin, it’s going to be a long week. If you’re one of her many fans, however, this week might be the next best thing to Christmas.

The release of the former governor’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” comes Tuesday amid a frenzy of national attention unseen since Palin was nominated for vice president more than a year ago.

The media blitz for the book began last week, but it climaxes today and tomorrow as Palin gives some of her highest-profile interviews since the election campaign.

Today at 3 p.m. AST on KTVF (Ch. 11), Palin appears on “Oprah” to promote her book and answer questions about the campaign.

On Tuesday morning, “Good Morning America” shows the first portion of a five-part interview between Palin and broadcaster Barbara Walters.

Other TV interviews also will air this week, including ones by Sean Hannity (Wednesday), Bill O’Reilly (Thursday and Friday) and Greta Van Susteren.

Then there’s the radio interviews. Palin is scheduled for the Eddie Burke Radio Show in Anchorage today and Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday.

Because most of the scheduled interviews have been pre-recorded, Palin will be free to begin her promotional book tour in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Wednesday.

After that, she’ll travel through Indiana, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, avoiding cities in favor of small towns, suburbs and military bases. “These are the places where she had her biggest fans and where we think we will sell the most books,” said Tina Andreadis of HarperCollins, which is publishing the book.

Sideshows flourish

The memoir will be accompanied by legion of titles waiting to cash in, from unauthorized biographies to critical essays to a tongue-in-cheek coloring book.

That doesn’t even include the picture book “Terminatrix: The Sarah Palin Chronicles” — which superimposes her head on paintings and famous photos — and a boomlet of self-published books, including one that weirdly takes Henrik Ibsen’s play “Hedda Gabler” and merely substitutes Gabler for Palin and George Tesman for Todd Palin.

This much is clear: Palin, whose wardrobe got her in trouble during the presidential campaign, has apparently sparked others to ride her memoir’s coattails, whether to assault, defend or just giggle.

“There is something about her which is very hard not to be drawn into,” said Colin Robinson, co-publisher at OR Books, which is putting out a collection of essays pulled together by two senior editors at The Nation magazine. “It might be a sort of adoration. Or it might be that one is appalled. But you can’t stop watching.”

Robinson’s book doesn’t exactly hide its disdain for the former vice presidential candidate, who is pictured on the cover in front of a stormy sky. It’s called “Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare.”

“Sarah Palin isn’t going away. That’s clear,” Robinson said. “She’s going to be an important force for some time to come in American politics and we think she’s a dangerous force. So we wanted to take the fight up against her.”

Other serious studies out this month include “Sarah From Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar” by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, and “The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star,” by Matthew Continetti, an associate editor at The Weekly Standard.

Serious study

The serious studies also include a work by three University of Wisconsin-Madison linguists who tackled the origins of Palin’s campaign-trail accent in a research article to be published in the Journal of English Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that happened in the 1930s.

During the presidential campaign, almost every aspect of Palin’s life, including how she talked, was dissected by everyone from curious voters to political pundits. Many noted that for someone who grew up in Alaska, she talked a lot like she had been raised in Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota.

The UW researchers said people living in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys are largely descendants of farmers who moved there in the 1930s from the Upper Midwest. More than 200 farm families moved to the Wasilla area in 1935 as part of a government program to start a new farming community.

“Everybody’s ear was basically right, but there’s a little complexity there that you don’t get until you go through and hack through it systematically,” said Joe Salmons, director of UW’s Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures.

He wrote the paper along with UW linguistics professors Thomas Purnell and Eric Raimy after they parsed the 7,640 words Palin spoke during the 2008 vice presidential debate.

While Palin has the expected Upper Midwestern speech patterns, she also has what Salmons called “screaming hallmarks of western speech.”

For example, Palin pronounces the word “feel” like “fill” and “peel” like “pill.” Those inflections were not picked up on by the media or those who lampooned Palin, Salmons said.

“It wasn’t part of the stereotype,” he said.

Lasting effect

While some of the books attempting to ride Palin’s coattails won’t be hits, there’s no doubt that Palin’s will be a massive success.

HarperCollins has announced plans to print more than 1.5 million copies, and Palin received an advance of more than

$1.25 million.

Her book is No. 1 on the Amazon.com bestseller list, outpacing the new Stephen King and Dan Brown novels, and despite a harsh review from a New York Times critic, it’s likely to top that newspaper’s list of bestsellers as well.

What effect this runaway success might have won’t become clear until several months from now, but the book has already boosted demand for her in speaking engagements.

On Sunday, the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference announced Palin as their keynote speaker for its February meeting in Redding, Calif.

If other groups follow suit, Palin likely will remain in the national spotlight for a long time to come.