Will Spitzer's Siren Sell Her Story?

Judging from her profile in The New York Times, Ashley Alexandra Dupre -- a.k.a. "Kristen," the prostitute at the center of the Eliot Spitzer scandal -- has a taste for fame. Indeed, she already has a hit single! Will she now seek to extend that fame as so many other accidental celebrities have -- with a book deal?

It's unlikely, perhaps, but far from impossible, says book publishing professionals.

"That's funny -- I've been thinking about it all day," said BookReporter.com president Carol Fitzgerald when I emailed for her thoughts. "There is a lot of chatter from book folks who are wondering about it."

Two years ago, it would've been a no-brainer: Dupre would've signed with Judith Regan, the publisher of choice for every porn star, stripper or double-murderer with a memoir itch. But Regan's out of the business now, and "I don't know post-Judith who would buy this kind of book," says one agent.

Not Twelve editor in chief Jonathan Karp, that's for sure. "No! No! No! There is no book in a two-hour tryst," he insists (although it's yet to be established whether Spitzer was a repeat customer of Dupre's). "The advance would be less than $4,100," he quips, "and I doubt the publisher would pay travel expenses."

"I don't think it's worth anything," agrees HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham. "There's no story there, just a transaction with a client."

Literary agent David Kuhn also says a Dupre tell-all is unlikely to have much appeal, "unless her personal story beyond the Spitzer connection is unusually compelling and dramatic, or unless she turns out to be an unusually gifted writer." That said, he adds, "all it takes is one, and as a publisher recently said to me, 'There's always one drunk on the road,' so she may well end up with a book deal, and maybe even a big one."

And if she doesn't, Fitzgerald has another idea that might be more marketable.

"I think uncovering the other women if this truly took place over a decade could be really interesting; I think that would make it more sellable since that could be the story everyone does not know. Eliot's Women: The Women Who Brought Down the Governor of New York. I could see the jacket with them all posed."

Then there's Silda Spitzer. Two agents separately said, unprompted, that a tell-all by the wronged wife is where the real money would be. Sighs one, "She could get one hell of an advance."

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