Unlike the book's author, retailers are opting to keep a low profile when it comes to selling O.J. Simpson's If I Did It.

Though the controversial volume — billed as a fictionalized account of how Simpson could have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman — will be available from U.S. book giants Barnes & Noble and Borders Group Inc., both retailers indicated Tuesday they will avoid promoting it.

O.J. Simpson has maintained his innocence in the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
(Richard Drew/Associated Press)

Barnes & Noble will not sell the book in its stores, electing to make it available only by special order or online.

"Our buyers don't feel there will be enough of a demand to carry it in our stores," spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said.

Rival chain Borders said it will stock the book but "will not promote or market the book in any way," said spokeswoman Ann Binkley.

"We think it will have some interest in the first week or two, then die down," said Binkley, who added that Borders, which for the original book had planned to donate profits to charity, will not do so this time.

A call to Indigo Books and Music Inc. — Canada's largest book retailer — was not immediately returned.

Simpson's book was originally scheduled to be published last November by ReganBooks — an imprint of HarperCollins — and its parent company News Corp., with an announced printing of 400,000. But If I Did It was dropped in response to widespread outrage, and ReganBooks founder Judith Regan was later fired and her imprint disbanded.

Last month, a U.S. federal bankruptcy judge awarded rights to the book to Goldman's family to help satisfy a $38-million US wrongful death judgment against Simpson.

Beaufort Books, a small New York-based publisher, is reissuing If I Did It in October, with Simpson's original manuscript intact and commentary included. The Goldman family is calling the book Simpson's confession — the same description Regan offered in justifying the original publication.

The estate of Nicole Brown Simpson has said the book should never be published, but that it should receive half of any money raised when the book rights were auctioned.

Simpson has maintained his innocence in the notorious 1994 killings in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.

The former actor and football great, who now lives near Miami, was acquitted in 1995 after a lengthy criminal trial, but later found liable in a civil trial.

With files from the Associated Press