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Buying Your Way Onto the NY Times Bestsellers List
Freshly Exhumed writes "An endorsement from Oprah Winfrey; a film deal from Steven Spielberg; a debut at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list. These are the things every author craves most. While the first two require the favor of a benevolent deity, the third can be had by anyone with the ability to write a check — a pretty big one, to ResultSource, a San Diego-based marketing consultancy — in what Forbes says is essentially a laundering operation aimed at deceiving the book-buying public into believing a title is more in-demand than it is. Soren Kaplan, a business consultant and speaker, hired ResultSource to promote his book Leapfrogging. Responding to the WSJ article on his website, Kaplan breaks out the economics of making the list. 'It's no wonder few people in the industry want to talk about bestseller campaigns,' he writes. 'Put bluntly, they allow people with enough money, contacts, and know-how to buy their way onto bestseller lists.'"
from how the rest of the world operates?
The authors of a business book called "The Discipline of Market Leaders" successfully manipulated the NY Times bestseller list in the '90s by buying thousands of copies of their own books at selected retailers (a paragraph on that episode appears here). Ironically, reviewers agreed that the book was actually pretty good, even after the authors' dicey behavior came to light.
And of course, Amazon.com is manipulated all the time by shills posting book and product reviews by allegedly disinterested customers. So is Zagat, and every other popular wiki review site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Libertine
This book, by Frederick C. Ewing, made the best-seller list in spite of the fact that neither it nor the author even existed. The hoax was perpetrated by Jean Shepherd and his radio audience to protest the way the lists were compiled - this was back in 1956.
WHat makes the submitter think that getting on Oprah's list any different? She takes sponsorships all the damn time, or you think she really presents things of her own choosing all the time? Like saying how awesome Surface was while sending it from her iPad?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5271516
Most books and movies are the same. Look at half the scifi books on amazon. Humans fighting aliens for some reason
When this happens you go with brand name or marketing to tell you what everyone else is buying
I check out the free books that indie authors drop the price on amazon to market their other books, and most times I rarely read them. They aren't that good and I go back to the brand name
There are companies that will "buy" your app to get you on the top of apple's charts
Apple has even been cracking down on it
n/t
How do you think all those gods-awful L. Ron Hubbard books got on the best seller lists? The cult members were ordered to buy as mony copies as possible of *every single book*, then they would return them to the book store a week later. And if the stores refused them, they'd "contribute" the stores to librraries. They'd especially do this if the libraries had books by former members explaining the cult secrets, to get the demystification books off the shelves, combined with campaigns to steal the demystification books.
Take a good look at the history of "The Scandal of Scientology", published by Paulette Cooper, and how the cult killed that book. Then ask your local librarian about why they have so many copies of Dianetics and Battlefield Earth and any of the L. Ron Hubbard fiction in the last 20 years. (They'd get hundreds of copies from cult members after each new book.) And ask the local bookstore owners, if you can get them to discuss it at all. The cult would even isolate the bookstores that were surveyed for bestseller lists and aim members at *those* bookstores, although modern data collection has made this more difficult to aim. (It's easier now to collect the data from *all* bookstores and directly from publishers.)
I have also seen another effect through team building. Some writes a book, often gibberish, but then consultants use it to market team building or efficiency seminars. Every seminar involves dozens of books, which generate revenue for the author. Of course, if the seminars are going to be successful, the book must have been a best seller. An upfront investment of $100K, and maybe the cost of ghost writer, can generate years of income.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I've seen first hand the same thing happen with music- even greenlighted by the artists themselves. Hitting various targets on Billboard Charts like Genre, Hot 100, Heatseekers, and even the 'uncharted' are all gamed like this. It's so norm now that it's often even included directly in the marketing plans and budgets.
Look at someone like Ann Coulter. Her target audience wouldn't bother to read the book, so why does it become a best seller? Because that part is engineered. The lets Coulter and her ilk make their money on public appearances. An ingenious scam, and doesn't even require writing ability.
If celebrity endorsements get authors on bestsellers lists, then I have no problem with people subverting those lists. Why respect something designed to spoon-feed people their culture? Next you'll be saying music streaming services are bad because they don't follow the playlists dreamed up by Clear Channel and the RIAA. "But, but, those aren't serving up the popular artists that our marketing experts have determined will sell best to people, and that we force on to the public through our control of the media! It's so cynical!"
I've always assumed that Winfrey's endorsement was for sale as well.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Rich people bend the rules?
Say it ain't so!
It has long been acknowledged that the "Best Seller" lists limit themselves to certain genres anyhow. For instance, romances and science fiction books which actually outsell many mainstream "best sellers" simply don't appear on the big best seller lists.
I tend to think of best seller lists as being of interest to people buying books in airports, and not much else.
Three Squirrels
You hire someone to go out and buy your books so it looks like you're a bestseller. Who knew this happened all the time?
The Criminal Cult of Scientology has been doing this for decades. The only surprise is how long it took others to start.
It is pretty obvious that a printer cannot know that a book will be on a best seller list before it is printed and there is no way to print covers retroactively. Yet, lots of people probably get fooled by it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Deception has become the foundation of communication in the modern world.
I basically assume everything is a lie until proven otherwise.
You can always do this with money. Buy enough of your own book that it actually is a best seller for a while. And if it works, make money by selling the stack of books you now have. Not so fun if it doesn't work though . . .
Top 40? Marketing money (altough thanks to web this has started to change). Box office? Marketing money (but not only). And let's not start with "special introducions" or playing song three times in one hour. Why it should be any different with books? People waste incredibly huge money for so called marketing and exposure.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
For a hardcover, they could simply replace the dust jacket with one that says "Bestseller" after it has made the list.
I doubt this amount of effort is put towards being legit, but it is at least possible.
Typical American Elitist crap. If you have enough money you don't wait in lines like the rest of us, you don't have to earn your place in society you can just buy it, you don't have any real merit to your life so you just buy your way into whatever you want. More of the 1% supporting the 1% and screw the rest of you.
Name ten major organizations that do deserve to retain press status.
I don't care which books are being read by the most people. I want to read books that are well-written, fun, and/or informative. What the herd reads doesn't matter to me.
Unless you are a book critic, I would suggest that you ignore what the herd reads as well.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
It's almost like talent doesn't even matter
Completely irrelevant. You are drawing a conclusion that is not supported by my post.
Scientology has been doing this for years, keeping Dianetics on the top of the charts. Members buy the books in bulk then send them back to the publisher - often in their original boxes - which are then sent back to booksellers.
At least ebooks make book laundering difficult and more expensive.
Oh, it matters. It's just that it is not enough, and it is not the indispensable determining factor for a publication's marketing success. But success+talent beats money making "success" in every meaningful way that I can imagine, just not necessarily in terms of monetary gain.
Is it really so surprising, that given a list of the best selling gadgets -- you can buy enough of your thing so your thing is on the best selling list?
I mean, it's counting the number of things sold. Just bundle your sales so they are in one week at the beginning, and you are on the list for that week.
I guess the "mystery" was how many sales that would require.
I wouldn't call it cheating; I would call it "how the game is played".
These are the things every author craves most.
No, I don't think the author of "Latvian military aircraft 1912 to 1934" gives the slightest damn about such things.
People actually pay attention to the NYTimes best seller list??? I never have. I find an author I like and read their books. Occasionally I'll look at reviews on Amazon but those have to be taken with a table spoon of salt. I read a lot of books and I've never looked at the NYTimes rating. Best is to be able to read a few pages randomly in the book. That tells me more than any review.
It is pretty obvious that a printer cannot know that a book will be on a best seller list before it is printed and there is no way to print covers retroactively.
[citation needed], please. I assume that you can actually show some real examples of first-edition hardcovers with preprinted "bestseller" covers, right?
A common formulation I see on covers is "By the bestselling author..." or "By the bestselling author of Foo...", both of which can be true before the book is printed.
Another option is to print a "bestseller" dust jacket for the second print run. (In principle, the dust jackets on the original first editions could even be replaced with the "bestseller" jackets, but I doubt that anyone goes to the trouble.)
Another variation is to affix a "bestseller" sticker to the cover of the first edition, after the book makes the bestseller list.
Yet another possibility is that the hardcover made its bestseller list, allowing the first print run of the trade paperback or mass-market paperback editions to bear the "bestseller" tag.
~Idarubicin
"Do people actually run out to buy a book just because Oprah reviewed it? Really?"
Yes, really, see the The Oprah Effect
AccountKiller
> An endorsement from Oprah Winfrey; a film deal from Steven Spielberg; a debut at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list. These are the things every author craves most.
Yeah. I'm sure Solzhenitsyn craved Oprah's blessing.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Not news at all.
I have never, N E V E R taken the NYT BS list seriously. If a novel, can debut at #1, it should be obvious that the fix is in, the list is rigged, it's either buying the spot or paying off the managers quietly.
When I began to consider buying books for entertainment, I realized this whole best-seller stuff was as fake as can be.
And while we're at it, those books released a week before the next version of whatever is actually shipped. Advertising. Pathetic.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The New York Times is in fact a paper of record.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Not news, but the n00bs out there need to know.
The largest selling author in the universe since Xneu destroyed the galatic federation!
You forgot just-in-time manufacturing. The "first edition" might be dozens of actual print runs.
I stopped paying attention to "best seller" status after I learned that one can have a best seller without a consumer ever buying a single book. It seems that it's based off wholesale sales not retail sales, so the whole thing is something of a sham to begin with.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
This explains everything.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Mitch Joel (six Pixels of Separation blog) had a great post on this. We've known folks in social media who have been leveraging their networks and bulk sales to help boost their book onto the list or manipulate Amazon rankings for years now. Once you are on the list, the trick is to stay on, but the list helps increase sales and make the next book deal even more likely... So every incentive is in place to try to get your whole network to work in concert, write reviews, and otherwise promote your latest tome. However, because it works with the sheeple, it will continue to be manipulated until the metrics for selection and addition change.