Given that it's been downloaded something like 10 million times worldwide, I'm assuming most of you have heard of terminally ill CMU professor Randy Pausch and his "Last Lecture." He's been on Oprah, in front of Congress, and was the subject of an ABC PrimeTime special last week, coinciding with the release date of his book of the same name.

I knew a lot of people had heard of him and were inspired by his story. But I didn't realize just how many until I saw that the book debuted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble at #1 last week. It's been there ever since. And over the course of three days, Amazon went from reporting that the book was shipping right away, to "1 to 4 weeks," to today's message that it will be available April 30th. They must be completely lost trying to keep up with demand.

I'm only a novice observer of the publishing biz, but either this means a) they went with a woefully inadequate first printing, or b) the book could be the second coming of Tuesdays with Morrie -- which camped out on the NYT Bestseller list for 205 weeks. Or more likely, both.

Anyway, I attended an event this morning with the co-author -- the Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote the original article about the lecture. (Pausch was on speakerphone answering questions as well). And I got a copy of the book, which the PR person told me to hide because they're in short supply. And I now see that she really wasn't kidding.
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