Eager for a few seconds of face time with their idol, hundreds of Bill Clinton's fans lined up Tuesday near a Manhattan bookstore where he was scheduled to sign copies of his new memoir, My Life.

"Bill Clinton is a rock star," said Lynne Roberts, 37, who set up camp Monday night, nearly 15 hours before the signing was to begin. "He is our cultural icon and we miss him now more than ever, given everything that's going on in the world."

The Rockefeller Center Barnes & Noble planned to give out more than 1,000 wristbands that would allow customers to purchase several copies, but only one autographed by the former president, who was to arrive at 12:30 p.m.

Although fans were told there would be no time to talk to Clinton, Dana Scinto of Stamford, Conn., said she would try to convey a message anyway.

"I want to thank him for eight fun years where he didn't insult my intelligence or rule by fear, like our current president," said Scinto, 39.

Clinton was also scheduled to sign books Tuesday night at a bookstore in Harlem, where he has an office.

To promote the book, Clinton has served as keynote speaker at BookExpo America, the publishing industry's annual national convention, and been interviewed by 60 Minutes,Time magazine and the British Broadcasting Corp., among others. Over the next month, he will visit independent booksellers, chain superstores, black-owned stores and price clubs such as Costco.

Abroad, the book also went on sale Tuesday in Britain and Ireland; translated copies were being readied in France for a Wednesday launch.

In other countries where translations remained months away, My Life arrived in the form of newspaper serializations that focused largely either on Clinton's relationship with his wife, Hillary, or with Monica Lewinsky.

In Ireland, which the ex-president still visits yearly for golf and lucrative speaking engagements, Dubliners lauded Clinton as a driving force behind both the country's 1990s economic boom and the peace process in neighboring Northern Ireland.

But critics and Clinton's political opponents have not been kind to the book. Rush Limbaugh has said the book should be called My Lie.The New York Times, in a front-page review Sunday, called it "sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull."

On NBC's Today, Bay Buchanan, chairwoman of the conservative American Cause organization, called its marketing "masterful" and Clinton "a brilliant man." But she said the book was "boring and too long."

With advance orders already topping 2 million, Clinton's book appears guaranteed to justify his advance and outsell the memoirs of his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who received $8 million. According to her publisher, Simon & Schuster, the senator's Living History has about 2.3 million hardcover and paperback copies in print.

Pre-orders for My Life have tripled over the last week at Barnes & Noble and also increased by double digits for Borders, even though the Borders discount for the $35 book dropped from 40% to 30% for orders made after June 14.

Source: Agencies