Paul Drinkwater/NBCPaula Deen remains a book-selling machine.
Be it a show of support, gallows humor or, maybe, simple culinary interest, preorders of the beleaguered celeb chef's next cookbook, Paula Deen's New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up, went through the roof this week, propelling it to the No. 1 spot on the Amazon Best Sellers list today.
The healthyish-living tome is due out Oct. 15, per the site, which also notes that the 448-page recipe collection has spent four days in Amazon's top 100. (Mind you, you can't get it yet. For months, even.)
It was chillin' at No. 16 yesterday, following Deen's emotional appearance on the Today show, and a spokesman for publisher Random House told E! News that the book was still on track for its fall release.
"We are monitoring the situation closely," the rep also said.
Deen has written 14 books and her latest, the 2011 mouthful Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible: The New Classic Guide to Delicious Dishes With More Than 300 Recipes, hit No. 1 on The New York Times best sellers list.
While Deen's stalwart fans (the "We Support Paula Deen" Facebook page currently has 487,000 "likes") are busy ordering books in the wake of the controversy kicked up when she admitted in a legal deposition that she used the N-word to describe a black suspect following an armed robbery at the bank where she was working as a teller in 1987, the utlimate hit to her domestic empire remains to be seen.
Cooking up $17 million in revenue last year landed her at No. 4 on Forbes' list of top-earning celebrity chefs.
A writer for the money-matters magazine told E! News last week (before Deen had been dropped by Walmart, Target and other deep-pocketed endorsement partners) that losing deals with Smithfield Foods and Food Network had probably cost her $3 million to $4.5 million.
—Reporting by Baker Machado