How to get on the New York Times best seller list when you are number 1,030 on Amazon

Ace of Spades reports, Valerie Jarrett’s Book Makes the Corrupt New York Times’ Bestseller List — Despite Being Ranked 1,030 on Amazon

Collusion?

Ace links to this article by Luke Rosiak in the Daily Caller. “Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s book is number 1,030 on Amazon with only three reviews, but is on the NYT Best Seller list. An industry insider said that was “inconceivable” and that Jarrett likely paid a company that helps authors buy their way onto the list.

One such company buys 10,000 copies of an author’s book and tries to prevent bestseller lists from realizing the sales aren’t organic, in which case the book may be moved down or taken off the list.

There were 12,600 reported sales of Jarrett’s book, enough to rank it highly on the Publishers Weekly chart, but Publishers Weekly did not put it on its list at all.

…

“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.”

Jarrett’s book outsold all but the top four books on the NYT list, according to BookScan, which tracks sales figures. But instead of putting it at number five, the Times placed it lower, including behind one book billed as “a behind-the-scenes look at the daytime talk show ‘The View,’” which is seventh.

“It should have been number five, except they excluded a big chunk of her sales for being sketchy. They’ve declared shenanigans,” one longtime book editor told TheDCNF also on the condition of anonymity.”

Ace concludes,

The New York Times uses certain bookstores for its list. I think this is how they keep conservatives off the list — when you’re sampling a dozen bookstores in New York and other leftwing cities, Bill O’Reilly books aren’t going to be high on the list.

The bookstores the Times samples aren’t known to the public — supposedly. But I’ve read that these strategic book-buying companies actually do know which book stores matter for the list, and buy from them. It’s the equivalent of rigging a poll’s sample.