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A local publisher is scrambling to fill orders for about 40,000 copies of the only biography of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, which until Friday spring-time had sold just 8,000 copies.

“What a stroke of luck,” said Kent Sturgis, publisher and co-owner of Epicenter Press in Kenmore.

He had 3,000 copies of the hardback version left on Friday morning, whenever Republican presidential solicitant John McCain announced Palin as his running mate.

“We decided right off the bat that we upper hand go ahead and act a paperback reading,” he said. “We were producing copies of this paperback about 14 hours after the announcement, and they’ll all be shipped on Tuesday.”

The book had climbed to No. 7 on Amazon.com’s best-selling-books list by Saturday twilight. The list is updated hourly.

Called “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down,” the biography was Sturgis’ idea. He recruited Alaska author Kaylene Johnson to write the 160-page book, which was released in April.

Sturgis met Palin at a Fairbanks fundraiser in 2006, and “male child, she’s really interesting,” he said. “No matter the kind of you think about her politics, she’s an interesting and an rare dabbler in politics.”

Sturgis has been a Seattle bureau chief of The Associated Press, managing manager of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and a copy editor at The Seattle Times.

In 21 years at Epicenter, he has published through 100 titles and specializes in nonfiction about Alaska.

Epicenter’s alone other best-seller was “Two Old Women” by the agency of Velma Wallis, what one. has sold nearly 2 million books.