At St. Martin's in the 1990s, we acquired biographies about celebrities that we assumed would die shortly, so that we could release them days after they died. This practice lasted for only two celebrities: Frank Sinatra, whose book didn't sell well (mostly because it wasn't very good), and Katharine Hepburn, who didn't have the courtesy to die a few months after we bought the rights to it, but waited five years (we finally threw in the towel and published it in 2000; I suspect it was on the remainder tables when she finally passed).
I'm pretty sure GSN made some plans for this.
