No, she's not doing the bigamy thing—Kelly's third "Reading with Ripa" Book Club choice, announced last Monday, is The Bachelor, a mass market original by Carly Phillips, published by Warner on July 1. This is the second Warner selection; the previous one, which launched Kelly's club, was Kate White's If Looks Could Kill. "At least we had a week's advance notice this time," noted publicity director Emi Battaglia. "We only found out about Kate's book the day before Kelly announced it." Bachelor's original 45,000 first printing was quickly supplemented with an additional 250,000, and the publisher just went back for another 75,000 copies (the impressive grand total: 370,000). When Kelly made her on-air announcement, The Bachelor ranked 48,834 at Amazon; as this column went to press (the afternoon of July 2), it was #1. Ripa gave the book a "high five" (out of five) for fun, ease of reading and sex—"actually, I would have given it a six for sex, if I could have," she added. Battaglia calls this latest pick, which is the first book in a trilogy, "the best fun you can have all summer for $5.99."
With reporting by Dick Donahue
