Sarah Palin is Going Rogue with early release of memoir

Sarah Palin, last year's Republican vice-presidential candidate who became a figure of global fascination, is to release her memoir just four months after her book deal was announced.

Publisher HarperCollins said Palin's memoir, titled Going Rogue: An American Life, would be published on November 17 after originally being scheduled for release in spring 2010.

The book will have a large first printing of 1.5 million copies, according to a statement from HarperCollins, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Senator Edward Kennedy's memoir True Compass, published soon after his August 25 death, also had an initial print run of 1.5 million hardcover copies.

Palin, 45, the brash and deeply conservative former governor of Alaska, burst onto the U.S. and international scene last year when Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain picked her as his running mate in the 2008 election campaign.

She has not disclosed how much she would be paid by the publisher for her memoir.

At the time the book deal was announced, Palin said in a interview published in Alaska's Anchorage Daily News that it would be good to have an unfiltered forum as there have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate.

During the electoral campaign she was criticized for being inexperienced and for describing herself as a hockey mom, joking that the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull was lipstick.

The former beauty queen was ridiculed for saying her foreign policy experience was bolstered by Alaska's proximity to Russia across the Bering Strait. Her family also came under scrutiny when her 18-year-old unwed daughter Bristol had a baby.

Palin abruptly resigned as Alaska's governor in July, citing a variety of reasons for quitting - the burden of fighting nearly two dozen ethic charges which she had dismissed as frivolous, her desire to avoid being perceived as a powerless lame-duck governor, and a higher calling, among others.