The Lidless Id He’s Tasteless, Depraved, Sexist, Vile And Uninhibited - So Why Is Howard Stern Sitting Pretty Atop Bestseller Lists?

“Miss America” By Howard Stern (ReganBooks)

Quick. Who’s the fastest-selling author of 1995?

Michael Crichton?

John Grisham?

Colin Powell?

None of the above. If you want to talk really big box office, nobody does it better than the outrageous Howard Stern.

Here it is, “Miss America” (ReganBooks), Stern’s second book on his favorite subject - Stern - featuring the shock jock coyly posed in eyeliner and falsies on the cover.

After one week on the shelves, it crash-landed at the top of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times best-seller lists; the book debuted at No. 2 in Los Angeles on Sunday.

“He’s the Colin Powell of cross-dressers,” says David Rosenthal, publisher of Villard Books, a division of the former general’s publisher, Random House.

Nay, Stern is no mere military man in a pushup bra. In his editor’s eyes, he’s the William Shakespeare of cross-dressers.

“I really think ‘Miss America’ is a piece of literature,” says Judith Regan, president and publisher of ReganBooks, a HarperCollins imprint.

“I don’t feel there’s a big difference between what Howard Stern says and what Shakespeare says in terms of reflecting their times. In 200 years, when people are studying late 20th century thought, they will read Howard Stern’s book to understand how debased the culture has become.”

A historical perspective was probably not the hot selling point for the thousands of Stern fans who lined up on “Miss America’s” maiden day in stores Nov. 7. They boosted sales at Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest book-seller, to a record-setting 33,000. ReganBooks has already printed 1.4 million copies.

Doubtless more alluring to his admirers is the fact that the adored and reviled Stern has “no lid on his id,” as Regan puts it.

“He does all these wicked things you might like to do but it would be completely inappropriate,” says Dennis Rook, professor of clinical marketing at University of Southern California.

“It’s like a dirty joke. You can giggle and laugh.”

Stern’s id is so lidless that his mother called in to his national radio show last week to berate him for the first chapter, which explicitly describes his adventures in cyberporn.

“I would like something more on the style of ‘Bridges of Madison County,’ ” she told “Entertainment Tonight.”

Regan says, “I tell women if you want to understand the average heterosexual man in this country, read the first chapter. Then you won’t be so offended by your husband’s fantasies. Granted, Howard Stern is excessive.”

Indeed. Stern, 41, who loudly proclaims his fidelity to his wife of two decades, nonetheless imagines her death in the book and lists the women he’d like to have sex with next.

Including Regan.

Stern’s editor says that fantasy had her “on the floor laughing my head off.”

When she caught her breath she exercised her editorial prerogative to have him tone it down. “I don’t need this aggravation,” she told Stern.

That’s not all the editing Regan did.

“He wrote 4,000 pages,” she says. “He’s a major overachiever. He wrote 4 books. He wrote 25,000 chapters. I said, ‘Howard. Stop writing.’ “

Much of “Miss America” reads as if Stern is telling his stories on air, although much of it would hardly be radio-friendly.

Stern says he’s particularly proud of the chapter detailing his meeting with Michael Jackson in which he pitches the embattled singer the idea of an hourlong TV interview.

Jackson, who shows up with surgical tape peeling off his nose and fingers, doesn’t bite, probably because he knows Stern would hit him with questions like the chapter title: “If you love children so much, where are the girls?”

Stern also writes about his aborted run for governor of New York; phone pranksters inspired by his radio verite riffs; the psychological underpinnings of his sadistic streak as a performer and his battles with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“My concept is, whatever you’re talking about, to totally open yourself up even if it means ridicule, even if it’s not politically correct or it’s embarrassing,” Stern says. “That’s what makes me interesting.”

The lavishly illustrated book was designed to be opened anywhere, Regan says.

“This isn’t a memoir with a beginning, a middle and an end,” she says. “It’s how Howard Stern’s brain works.”

“It seems to me that people are buying icons,” Rosenthal says. “All the books selling in this number, mainly nonfiction, are all celebrity-driven books.

“Here’s something that sits on the coffee table. You can’t put your radio on the coffee table and have Howard Stern pop up, but having (the book) on your coffee table makes a statement about who you are to the other weirdos who come into your house. So it’s like wearing a button, and nothings wrong with that.”

Or driving with a dangler - cutouts of Howard in fishnets - festooning your rearview mirror. Stern fans are buying them in New York from his distributors - your friendly local homeless people. Coming soon to a Stern radio affiliate near you.

Stern, who’s credited with being a promotional whiz, lured thousands of fans last week to a New York book signing that featured the author in a dress, strippers in bikinis and a midget in a tuxedo.

And the E! Entertainment network, which carries a televised version of his radio show, is putting together an hourlong special to run in December.

Of course, there’s also that handy promotional vehicle, “The Howard Stern Show,” broadcast mornings to 8 million to 20 million people in 24 cities.