Picking up on the speculation of last week, Radar is telling its readers that failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is “reportedly close to making a book deal for $7 million.” We’ll believe it when we see it.

The blog’s anonymous source doesn’t actually provide any confirming details, but merely speculates that Palin “has huge appeal to a segment of the female reading public, and her private life hasn’t been an open book.” Both of which are true, but… notice that this source said “huge appeal to a segment,” not “appeal to a huge segment.” There is, absolutely, a market for a Sarah Palin book, and somebody will pick up on that at some point—the only question is whether that publisher is really willing to spend $7 million on an author whose approval ratings got worse the more the public got to know her.

Nobody asked us, of course, but beyond the three obvious suspects in New York City—Sentinel, Crown Forum, and Threshold—we’d suspect that Palin’s best chance for a book deal might come from the Christian publishing market, which would no doubt welcome a memoir about how Palin’s faith and family led her to and guided her through her historic moment in the spotlight… but we can’t remember when any publisher there paid that much money for a single book.

But, hey, we could be wrong… it happens often enough. (Tina Dupuy has more on Palin’s alleged deal at FBLA.)