Follow the Money: The Marketing of Deep Throat

"I think any publisher will have that [skepticism]," Shandler said. "And reasonably so -- especially if Woodward has a book coming out, because you know it'll be a bestseller."

He also acknowledged that his house, Little, Brown, is among those who have agreed to a meeting with Kuhn and O'Connor.

"If you asked me two days ago how much you'd pay for Deep Throat's memoir, I'd say the sky's the limit," said David Hirshey, senior vice president at HarperCollins. "Now that the great mystery has been solved, I'm sure the sky is a little bit lower. But Deep Throat is still one of the biggest 'gets' of all time and I expect major publishers to chase it like Ahab did the whale. And I'll be one to have the harpoon out."

Hirshey said he expected the Felt book to be sold for more than $1 million, and some agreed with him. Others in the publishing industry questioned that number, but acknowledged that it's hard to know, yet, what the book will be worth.

"It's all about source material," said David Black, of the David Black Literary Agency. "Did he keep a diary? Were there records? Did he keep audio conversations with Woodward? Hoover was a great record-keeper, right? Was this guy?"

Then there's the Woodward factor.

"Bob's book is sure to be coming out in a matter of weeks," said Peter Osnos, who has published previous books about Deep Throat and is currently the publisher of PublicAffairs (Osnos worked at The Washington Post at the time of Watergate). "In that case, Felt's story comes along later, and has all the earmarks of something that was a scramble.

"But," Osnos added, "someone will buy it for a lot of money."

Television producers have another dilemma: Is what they term a "period piece" a good gamble in an age when the demographic everyone is chasing is 18-to-49-year-olds? These are viewers, in many cases, whose knowledge of Watergate comes from the Robert Redford-Dustin Hoffman 1976 movie classic, "All the President's Men." If they have any knowledge at all.

"As fascinated as we are by this, is there a movie for a contemporary 2005 audience?" said Robert Sertner, a partner in the production house Von Zerneck/Sertner Films, one of the most prolific producers of television movies. "Everybody is intrigued, but scared."

But, Sertner acknowledged, "right now a lot of agents and lawyers are trying to get their fingers into this."

"We've already gotten about three solid pitches, two from fairly well-established Hollywood-based producers," said Henry Schleiff, chairman and CEO of Court TV, though none of those came from anyone representing the Felts. "Outside of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, this is the third best mystery out there."

Staff writers Lynne Duke, Mark Leibovich and Lisa de Moraes contributed to this report.