Once it was Madonna. Now, the new darling of Manhattan's gossiping classes is Monica Lewinsky. Her every banal activity is logged and derided in the databank of celebrity: Monica and her mum have a row in a restaurant; Monica goes shopping; Monica buys a bagel; Monica cowers in her hotel room; Monica goes out with a scarf obscuring her features (though not well enough).
But what else is this young woman to do with her fame, built as it is on no discernable talents other than for job-seeking and for gaining vacuous notoriety? It was only proximity to power that gave her a place on the world's stage and now, as Congress puts away its dossiers and tries to remember what it used to do before she happened by, it is time for her to cash in on her one valuable commodity - herself.
St Martin's Press, which has paid $625,000 (IR£416,000) for the honour, is expecting to receive any day the completed manuscript of Monica's Story, by Andrew Morton. Already, a hardback cover has appeared on the Amazon online bookstore website promising 288 pages at the reduced price of $17.46, or the audio cassette version for $12.60.
No release date has been set, though it is expected that the work by the author of Diana: Her True Story will be out later this month, once Ms Lewinsky has been released from the silence imposed upon her by Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor whose investigation into President Clinton's activities led to impeachment proceedings.
Until then there is the hiss of tittle-tattle to fuel her legend: talk of a Hollywood musical; her mother's dispute with a bakery shop (she claims it tipped off photographers to her daughter's presence); the word from her personal trainer that Monica cheats on her diet and wears gaudy jogging kit: "You don't want to be noticed and you're wearing hot-pink hot pants?"
St Martin's has ordered an initial print run of up to 400,000, and sales will be stimulated by an interview on ABC with telly grand dame Barbara Walters. Barbara, says an insider at Channel 4, which has paid for its own interview, just wants to make her cry.
Barbara could be disappointed. Anyone who saw the cheekily glib psychology major's performance in Senate testimony a week ago - dressed in the clothes of a woman twice her 25 years - knows they were not watching someone who needs camera aversion therapy.
Ms Lewinsky's is by no means the only book on the way. First out of the traps after the Morton effort will be All Too Human: A Political Education, by the former White House political adviser, Mr George Stephanopoulos, who has been advanced $3 million by Little Brown. But the public is only human and Mr Laurence Kirshaum of Time Warner Trade Publishing, which owns Little Brown, said: "Sixty to 90 days from now this subject could be a big yawn."
One Newsweek reporter, Mr Michael Isikoff, must hope not: his Uncovering Clinton is expected out in April. Other contenders include the New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin's A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President. British soothsayers are represented by No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulation of William Jefferson Clinton, by Christopher Hitchens, and The Joy of Sex: Bill Clinton and the Conquest of Puritanism, by Alexander Cockburn, whose book is planned for a dangerously late May.
"They're all going to end up as remainders," said a White House official. "The last six months have been like chewing on the same piece of gum - the flavour's all gone."
What then for Ms Lewinsky? Perhaps the reputed boyfriend who works for an independent film company will still be about. The legal bills certainly will be. So will the 24-hour cable news channels, always eager for "content", and the rest of the media with anniversary slots to fill.