Who says business has no conscience? Bantam...

Who says business has no conscience? Bantam Books, the New York-based hardcover and paperback publisher, has announced that it will donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of nine of its most acclaimed books about Vietnam and World War II to the Veterans Education Project, with the specific goal of underwriting publication costs of a 700-page revised and updated manual informing Vietnam veterans of their rights and benefits. As part of this first-ever Veterans’ Day promotion, Bantam will donate one penny for every copy of nine longtime best sellers shipped to booksellers in the United States and Canada. Six of the books are by or about Vietnam veterans and three are what the publisher calls “classic accounts” of World War II, including the combat journal of Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated GIs of World War II and who became a film star.

Promising to match customer donations of one penny per copy, thus ensuring a 3-cent donation per book, Bantam has guaranteed a minimum of $5,000. Up to $10,000 will go to the veterans’ manual, to be distributed at 189 Vietnam Veteran Centers across the country. Any funds in excess of $10,000 will be allocated to the Smithsonian Institution’s Project on the Vietnam Generation, a new nonprofit effort to foster “scholarship on the dynamics of the generation of Americans who came of age during the war.”

The notion is the brainchild of Jack Hoeft, president of Bantam’s sales and marketing division. Not coincidentally, former Army Capt. Hoeft served in Vietnam.

Under the heading of substantially more than zero, “Less Than Zero,” the first novel of now-21-year-old Bret Easton Ellis of Sherman Oaks, has earned the Bennington College senior a quite-comfortable $99,000 paperback deal with Penguin Books. With perks, the figure for this story of love and life among L.A.’s affluent young is said to crest six figures.

Meanwhile, fresh from honoring their champion of disillusioned youth with a chi-chi gathering at New York’s Limelight disco, hardback publisher Simon & Schuster confirmed that it has signed Ellis to do two more books. While Ellis apparently is hoping one will be a collection of short stories--new and old, if anything written by a 21-year-old can be described as “old”--the second is likely to be “an East Coast ‘Less Than Zero,’ ” or, “ ‘Less Than Zero’ goes to Bennington.”

Coasting along on most major best-seller lists--including, as of Sept. 14, the New York Times--Ellis also enjoys the distinction of having been the first author interviewed by the unofficial voice of his generation, MTV.

What does the U.S. Open have to do with publishing? Nothing if you’re a hard-core tennis purist; plenty, if you happen to be best-selling author Martina Navratilova, co-writer of “Martina” (Knopf)--and still more if you’re “Eat to Win” author Dr. Robert Haas.

Formerly Navratilova’s nutritional adviser, Haas was hired this year by Czechoslovakian tennis ace Ivan Lendl. The pre-tourney news that Lendl said he was faster, stronger and feistier than ever as a result of his Haas-streamlined diet did little to faze the perennially cocky (former champion) John McEnroe. Sneered McEnroe: “What’s he on, the Haas diet? Well, I’m on the Haagen-Dazs diet.”

Final scores: Lendl trounced McEnroe, Navratilova fell to dietary unknown Hana Mandlikova, and Haas delivered to Rawson the manuscript for his “Eat to Win” sequel, “Eat to Succeed: The Haas Maximum Performance Program,” scheduled for January publication.

It reads like the kind of romantic heroine story you pick up reluctantly--and then can’t put down: Strong, elegant woman single-handedly builds international cosmetics empire, eventually allowing her husband to join her at the helm. Outsmarts arch rivals around the planet. Leads a glamorous public life. Manages to guard a shred of her private life.

But “Estee: A Success Story” is in fact the autobiography of beauty empress Estee Lauder. Random House, releasing the book Nov. 1 with a cool 100,000-copy first run, reports, according to publisher Howard Kaminsky, that the book contains “enough trade secrets to launch a rival business.”

Beyond its obvious parallels to the ever-popular romance novel, “Estee” bears strong topical similarities to another business leader’s autobiography. Any comparisons to Bantam’s “Iacocca,” the biggest best seller in hardcover publishing history, are purely unintentional, Random House insists. But, said vice president Carol Schneider, the description of “Estee” as “a woman’s ‘Iacocca’ ” would “certainly be apt”--and “definitely,” from a sales point of view, “it would be nice if it were apt.”