Watching MTV's verite tragicomedy "Jersey Shore," one would not suspect Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi harbored literary ambitions.

Polizzi gives the impression that, if she has any use at all for books, it would be as coasters upon which to place her soon-emptied drinks. Larger volumes, of course, might be stacked on a chair for the elfin 22-year-old to sit upon when she wants to dine with grown-ups, but this, too, is speculative.

Simon & Schuster, however, is looking past that to the 5.5 million amateur anthropologists who watch her weekly train wreck on TV and 575,000 or so followers who hang on her every comment on Twitter, and, without missing a bleat, thinks, well, if they'll buy that …

So a mere 71/2 months after Polizzi declared on Twitter that she was reading her first book, Nicholas Sparks' "Dear John" — or "officially reading my first bo! Lmao!" as @Sn00ki actually tweeted — the publishing house's Gallery Books imprint announced it will issue Polizzi's first novel in January.

"A Shore Thing" — get it? — will be the story of a woman looking for love amid "big hair, dark tans and fights galore" on the coast of New Jersey. But "Jersey Shore" fans presumably will see through that and quickly realize it's little more than a loosely fictionalized version of their all-time favorite MTV show … "Jackass."

"I'm pumped to announce to my fans a project that I've been working on for some time," Polizzi said in announcing the book deal. "This book will have you falling in love at the shore. It's 'A Shore Thing!'"

Get it this time too?!?

Polizzi's foray into the written word is emblematic of how bookstores, like television and partly because of it, have found the need to have shelf space for the literati and the glitterati alike. When the audience and its interests splinter every which way, those trying to reach them have to scatter as well.

So there's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and girls with other skin art and piercings, "The Naked and the Dead" and the naked and the unwed, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and unbearable lightness. Next time you hear a snob say he doesn't watch TV, remind him Barnes & Noble isn't any better.

CBS-owned Simon & Schuster, which has published books by both Ernest Hemingway and Mariel Hemingway, released Bob Woodward's new book "Obama's War" just on Monday. A day later, it released "Priceless," the second novel from Nicole Richie, most famous for her snarky reality-TV field trips into everyday America with effete heiress Paris Hilton, another published author.

Disney's Hyperion Books has "Skinny Italian," a food book from Teresa Giudice of "The Real Housewives of N.J." Sixteen-year-old singing idol Justin Bieber has "First Step 2 Forever: My Story" due out this month from News Corp.-owned HarperCollins. St. Martin's Press has enlisted reality TV's Kardashian sisters — Kourtney, Kim and Khloe — for next month's joint memoir, "Kardashian Konfidential."

And anyone who's remotely famous and hasn't written a children's book simply isn't trying.

Polizzi is best known as simply Snooki, in the tradition of the British author and playwright H.H. Munro, who wrote a century ago under the singular pen name Saki, which, given Polizzi's predilections, would have been a fine choice for her had it not already been claimed.

Snooki may be a neophyte novelist, but she's shown an effort to prove the equal of Jack Kerouac, James Joyce or William Faulkner in her reputation as a drinker, which is her contribution to the combustible mix that powers her MTV show.

She told Access Hollywood that a RadarOnline.com report this week that she was hospitalized this year for alcohol poisoning was "not true." But she is routinely sloshed and pugnacious on "Jersey Shore" and was sentenced to two days of community service and fined for a boozy midday disturbance on a public seaside boardwalk in New Jersey by a judge who warned, "This is not the way you want to live your life," and called her a Lindsay Lohan wannabe.

"I started drinking at 10, and it escalated to being wasted at 12, and that's why I got arrested," Snooki later explained to ABC's Jimmy Kimmel. "But I had a good time doing it and I didn't hurt anybody. ... I was drinking SoCo (Southern Comfort), vodka, Jager (Jagermeister), Long Islands (Long Island iced teas), beer. I started drinking at work. I was funneling and then I went to the bar. ... I feel like I can drink any older man under the table, so I feel like I can handle my alcohol."

One can see why Gallery Books might have viewed a children's book a poor fit.

With "A Shore Thing" — you got it this time, for sure — Snooki's glass is neither half empty nor half full, because it's Snooki's glass.

But, in hardcover and paperback, no one can see you slur.

philrosenthal@tribune.com