Book Ranked 1,030 On Amazon. Makes NYT’s Best Seller List?

[Mike Mercury]

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s book is number 1,030 on Amazon with only three reviews, but is on the NYT Best Seller list.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/14/v...-manipulation/

Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to former President Barack Obama, published a book that ranks dismally on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble, but was placed on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Anomalies around the book’s sales figures in industry databases have some in the book business questioning whether Jarrett, who’s rumored to have received a million-dollar-plus advance, paid a company to game the numbers.

Her book, which was published April 2, is number 1,030 on Amazon’s list of top sellers and has only three reviews on the site. It similarly ranks 1,244 on Barnes and Noble where signed copies are being sold for less than the suggested retail for unsigned copies.

Yet the book was also 14th on the NYT bestseller list.

“Given the organic sales of that book and the fact that during the entire week of rollout it barely cracked the top 100 on Amazon, there’s no way the book should have a place on the NYT Best Seller list. Inconceivable,” one prominent book industry insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “There’s likely an effort to game the system, it’s the only explanation.“

NYT creates its own estimate of book sales from sampling book stores and also adjusts placements higher or lower for various reasons. NYT did not return a request for comment.

“This is the first time that I’ve seen a book that doesn’t show up on the PW list but when you drill into BookScan, you see that it had sales that should have been there,” president of the conservative book publisher Regnery, Marji Ross, said.

The book editor that requested anonymity told TheDCNF: “We all know that when Bookscan excludes a book, then it’s been left off because of something sketchy, a bunch of bulk sales or an unusual geographic spread.”

The first industry expert added, “There are some industry sources who don’t think she should be on the list because of fraudulent reporting.”

NPD, the company that compiles the BookScan data, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Publishers Weekly.


Buying success
For a price, companies such as Result Source will help authors buy their way onto the bestseller list. The bestseller lists exclude bulk sales, so they work by buying large numbers of books in a way that appears as manual, individual sales. The purchases are also concentrated during one week, ensuring that its numbers are high enough to place in the top 10 during its crucial launch week, even if it means stockpiling and trying to resell those books over a long period of time.

Result Source generally bought between 10,000 and 11,000 copies in the first week in order to ensure a spot on the bestseller list, he said, another red flag with Jarrett’s 12,600 number. “Is that 11,000 bulk sales and then only 1,600 copies?"

[bill_daniels]

[SnikPlosskin]

Originally Posted by bill_daniels

Ape is hotter.