You’ve Seen the War, Now Read the Books : Publishing: The Persian Gulf crisis has speeded up plans for some projects and renewed interest in others. But the rash of instant books is not as great as expected.

It has played right alongside news coverage of Operation Desert Storm, on television and on the front page of the New York Times. “ ‘The Rape of Kuwait.’ Read it and find out why we’re there,” the advertisement bugles.

The slender paperback volume, written by Jean P. Sasson, a first-time author who formerly lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is the most trumpeted of a batch of books just out--or in preparation--on the Persian Gulf crisis.

These books range from the instant variety, produced in round-the-clock writing sessions, to analytical works that have been given commercial impetus by the hostilities. Selections include a biography of Saddam Hussein, an interpretation of biblical prophecies of war and an upcoming Middle East techno-thriller by blockbuster novelist Tom Clancy.

In the instant category, “The Rape of Kuwait” (paperback, $4.95) stands out as the predominant example. Published by Knightsbridge, a small Los Angeles-based company formed in 1989, the book presents a collection of eyewitness accounts of Iraqi atrocities against the Kuwaiti population. “It’s horrifying but you can’t stop reading it,” promises Knightsbridge’s marketing director, Lisa Wyeth Kirk.

Produced in five months (Sasson, a former hospital administrative assistant in Riyadh, jetted to the Saudi capital eight days after the Aug. 2 invasion), the book’s promotion was in lock-step with the war. On Jan. 15, a 46-city satellite author “tour” was held, and, as the first wave of allied bombings began, twice-daily ads were pumped over the three major television networks.

Kirk declines to discuss the book’s promotion budget, nor would she discuss expected profits. One million copies of “Rape” have been printed, with an additional 200,000 sent to the allied troops by a third party, who, Kirk says, remains anonymous.

Meanwhile other books about events in Iraq are being put on the fast track for publication.

Efraim Karsh, a lecturer in the Department of War Studies of King’s College, London, and Inari Kautsi, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Helsinki, have had their analysis of the Iraqi leader in the works for three years.

The Free Press, a division of Macmillan, which signed the book, “Saddam Hussein, a Political Biography,” in November, has scheduled it for May publication in hard cover.

The first quickie on the market, “Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf” (paperback, $6.95) by New York Times Middle East correspondent Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, a scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, was written in three weeks, according to Times Books, a division of Random House, which published it in October.

Miller “sat locked in an office writing it out,” says Random House publicist Ceale Ballenger, while the division’s editorial director, Steven Wasserman, edited it. A combination of historical and current events, the book has sold close to 400,000 copies.

With pervasive television coverage, however, publishing sources say the Gulf crisis has not brought about the sort of rash of instant books that might have been expected. After a heyday in the 1970s, popularity of the genre has been dwindling.

Besides competing with the news media, notes James Milliot, editor of the weekly newsletter, Book Publishers Report, “instant books are a heavy investment of time. They’re a tough item to make money on. And publishers now are much more concerned about the bottom line.”

Indeed, Bantam, the queen of instant books with nearly 80 titles to its credit, reports nothing definite yet in the works. “If we did something, it would likely have to be written in three or four days,” says Stuart Applebaum, vice president of publicity, noting that with the media blitz the problem would be “finding a fresh perspective.”

Nevertheless, some prospective authors and publishers have had their eyes out for ways to get a jump on events. The day before fighting broke out, Joyce Seltzer, vice president and senior editor of Free Press, received a proposal by three military experts for a book analyzing the war.

Other books are being hurriedly written for publication. Elaine Sciolino, former New York Times correspondent in the Middle East, is bashing out a personal account of events leading up to the war. Tentatively titled “A Line in the Sand,” it is scheduled to be published by John Wiley by the end of the summer, and says a spokesperson, “is going to be a big title for us.”

Then, there are those happy few authors whose books have been brought back to life by the war. “Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis,” (Zondervan Publishing), an examination of biblical prophecies of war, by John F. Walvoord, chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary, sold a half-million copies between 1974 and 1984, when it went out of print. Quickly revised with an oil-and-war update, it has sold almost as many copies in the last six weeks, with the Rev. Billy Graham’s evangelical organization ordering 200,000 books.

Originally published in 1989, “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” by Thomas L. Friedman (Anchor/Doubleday), was reprinted in paperback in August and spent 21 weeks on the New York Times paperback bestseller list.

The book most clouded in mystery is “Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq,” an analysis of that country’s ruling Baathist regime written by a pseudonymous Iraqi exile called Samir al-Khalil and published by Pantheon in October. “He has no desire to have anyone be able to make any connections,” says the publishing house’s publicity director, Susan Disesa, who adds that the University of California Press at Berkeley, originally published the book in 1989.

Former Secretary of Navy James Webb’s new novel, “Something to Die For” (hardcover $19.95) will be out in February with a plot centered on the inner workings of Capitol Hill and their effect on Allied soldiers.

No doubt most eagerly awaited is Tom Clancy’s sixth novel, “The Sum of All Fears,” scheduled for publication in August. Clancy, who declines to reveal the plot of his book, which is half-written, feels hard-pressed to defend the originality of his Mideast setting.

“If I’d written the book last year, people would have accused me of being a witch,” he says. As it is, he worries that readers “are going to accuse me of having written this very quickly. But it just isn’t true. I have pages that are 10 years old.”

And if necessary, he says, he will have them carbon-dated.