Madonna Book Stimulates Flurry of Interest at Stores : Publishing: Customers line up early to buy the $49.95 photo collection, but many are disappointed by late shipments.

Does sex sell? Yes, if Madonna is the saleswoman.

From London to Los Angeles, the curious mobbed bookstores Wednesday to get a copy of the pop star’s heavily hyped, kinky, metal-bound, Mylar-clad “Sex” book. But many were disappointed.

In Southern California shipments arrived later in the day than expected, and some stores reported receiving far fewer copies than they ordered or could have sold.

“There’s been an enormous customer response,” said Donna Passannante, a spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, which owns B. Dalton, Scribner and other book chains. “People were waiting at some stores since 8 a.m., and at stores that hadn’t gotten it by opening, people were saying, ‘Whaddya mean it’s not here yet?’ ”

“It’s like they’re supposed to fall from the sky all at the same time,” said a frustrated Ed Conklin, manager of Dutton’s bookstore in Brentwood, while waiting for his shipment of 75 to 100 “Sex” books to arrive.

“Sex,” which features 128 pages of graphic art photos of Madonna by fashion photographer Steven Meisel, is a banner event for the $20-billion book publishing industry, which is growing despite the sluggish economy. New York-based Warner Books ordered a record initial printing of 750,000 copies.

Ellen Herrick, the publisher’s vice president and director of publicity, predicted that 150,000 copies would be sold by the end of business Wednesday--despite the coffee table book’s hefty $49.95 suggested retail price and a wrapper that prevents peeking at the contents.

With the book sealed and few copies on view, customers had little more than bad reviews and the pre-publication publicity on which to base their buying decisions.

Prior to publication, Madonna said the shots--in which she hitch-hikes nude and mixes it up with shaven-headed, knife-wielding lesbian punks, rappers Vanilla Ice and Big Daddy Kane, actress Isabella Rossellini and model Naomi Campbell--were meant to be liberating and stimulating.

But USA Today called the book “silly,” “slightly pathetic” and “inadvertently funny.” The New York Times was no kinder, saying that the images “seem more likely to strike people as gross, inane or willfully perverse than provocative or erotic.”

Still, stores nationwide reported that buyers were unbowed. Boston’s Barnes & Noble sold about 20 copies in its first hour of business.

At Doubleday book store in New York, a scantily clad, life-size cardboard Madonna graced two stacks of the book just inside the Fifth Avenue entrance. At the tony Rizzoli book store, a reluctant customer service representative said curtly: “It’s here, it’s doing well.” Copies of the book there were kept behind the register.

The book was also reported selling out in Britain and France.

But most Southern California store clerks had to take consolation in fielding calls and walk-in inquiries about the book--most of them didn’t receive their shipments until midafternoon, and even then, in many cases they didn’t get the quantity they’d hoped for.

Neil Webb, director of marketing for Nashville-based Ingram Distribution, the nation’s largest book wholesaler, said that late and scaled-down deliveries occurred across the country because Warner Books did not deliver as many copies as originally promised.

Warner Books’ Herrick blamed a backlog in printing for the delay but promised that the full orders will be met shortly.

A clerk at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena reported that it had ordered 240 copies but received only 30 on Wednesday, and those came late. Anyone walking in to buy the book would have been out of luck, as advance special orders had already far exceeded the number on hand.

The staff and customers of the discount Bookstar outlet at the Beverly Connection shopping center in West Hollywood were also kept waiting. The store’s shipment of 250 arrived at 1:30 p.m. There was already a list of more than 100 people who had placed orders for it.

Assistant Manager Leora McFarthing said that throughout the day, “literally every other phone call was about the book, and people seem to be going from store to store to find who has it.”