Posted on 07/13/2015 8:11:32 AM PDT by VinL
The New York Times' refusal to put Ted Cruz's memoir on its bestseller list is once again being called into question — this time by Amazon, the largest Internet retailer in the country.
On Sunday, an Amazon spokesperson told the On Media blog that the company's sales data showed no evidence of unusual bulk purchase activity for the Texas senator's memoir, casting further doubt on the Times' claim that the book — "A Time For Truth" — had been omitted from its list because sales had been driven by "strategic bulk purchases."
"As of yesterday, 'A Time for Truth' was the number 13 bestselling book, and there is no evidence of unusual bulk purchase activity in our sales data," Sarah Gelman, Amazon's director of press relations, said in an email.
Amazon's findings match those of HarperCollins, the book's publisher, which said Friday that it had "investigated the sales pattern" for Cruz’s book and found "no evidence of bulk orders or sales through any retailer or organization." Moments after that announcement, Cruz's campaign issued a press release accusing the Times of lying and calling on the paper to provide evidence of bulk purchasing or else formally apologize.
“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response — alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’ — is a blatant falsehood,” Cruz campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler said in a statement Friday. “The evidence is directly to the contrary. In leveling this false charge, the Times has tried to impugn the integrity of Senator Cruz and of his publisher HarperCollins.”
“A Time For Truth," which was published on June 30, sold 11,854 copies in its first week -- more than 18 of the 20 titles on the Times bestseller list for the week ending July 4, according to Nielsen bookscan. On raw numbers, Cruz's book would have finished at #3 on the Times' influential list of hardcover nonfiction. However, the Times informed HarperCollins last week that Cruz's book would not be on the list.
In an email last week, Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said that "A Time For Truth" did not meet the paper's "uniform standards," which include "an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold." In the case of Cruz's book, she said, "the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases."
As HarperCollins has noted, Cruz's book “ranked high on other publishing industry bestseller lists including Nielsen Bookscan (#4) … The Wall Street Journal (#4) and Barnes and Noble (#7),” all of which “omit bulk orders books from their rankings.”
The fracas between Cruz and the Times has been a boon to the Texas senator's presidential campaign, sparking outrage and sympathy from conservatives who suspect liberal bias from the Times and the mainstream media.
“It’s been a good week and a half with wall-to-wall coverage of the book, and yes, this latest unfortunate news courtesy of the New York Times is a chance to get yet more attention and drive readers to Senator Cruz’s book,” Keith Urbahn, the book's literary agent, said last week. “This controversy is already helping sales.”
Waiting for an apoplogy from the dirtballs at the New York Slimes.... not.
whoa.
And it’s not like Amazon is a conservative rag....
America’s “newspaper of record,” found to be fibbing.
All the news that fits the talking points.
Even thought I probably won’t read it (not because it’s Cruz but because I just don’t read those kind of books) I think I’ll get a copy. Cruz couldn’t ask for a better recommendation than this.
“Bulk buying” happens with the Clintons, Obamao, Gore etc. And then they STILL don’t rank in the top 100.
No one ‘Suspects’ Times/MSM Bias. No one. It’s well beyond ‘suspect’ to anyone with sensory perception.
Allow a bit of time to pass-—the BS gets absorbed by the soil and it’s gone.
I work at a large Christian publisher. The Times consistently leaves books that should have been best sellers of the list, or downgrades them significantly. Joel Rosenberg is an example. Joel’s most recent book, The Third Target, was 4th on BookScan (the WSJ uses BookScan) but didn’t even crack the top 10 on the Times list.
Even if Cruz did sell some bulk copies it still sold enough other copies to make the list.
1) The New York Times list really isn’t a “best sellers” list. The Times uses a proprietary formula to compile its list. From what we’ve learned tracking multiple books that have achieved NYT best sellers status (or just missed for a variety of reasons), the Times places quite a bit of weight on books sold through independent book stores (not Amazon or B&N, although those are weighed as well). It also weighs wide geographic distribution heavily. It wants its best sellers to sell throughout the country, not just one region of the country. For example, our book with Gene Chizik, the former football coach at Auburn, sold well more than enough copies to become a NYT best seller but because most of those titles were sold in the southeast it didn’t make the NY Times list. Drew Brees’s book Coming Back Stronger was the No. 1 best seller on the WSJ list but was not No. 1 on the NY Times list.
2) Best sellers lists such as The Wall Street Journal list utilizes Nielsen BookScan, which records about 70 percent of all book sales. Its lists are based on books “scanned,” no matter where or through what outlet. If an author has very little distribution through anything but Amazon, BookScan will record those sales and it will help an author make the WSJ list but it won’t help them make the Times list. We’ve had multiple books (Drew Brees and Beth Moore to name two) who have sold the most copies in a week but have not been No. 1 NYT best sellers (both reached as high as No. 2)
3) The significant (NYT, WSJ, PW) best sellers lists are tabulated over one-week time periods. For example, a book can sell 1,000 books per week for years and never make a best sellers list. Tyndale author Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven has more than one million copies in print yet has never made the NYT list because it hasn’t had a week where it’s sold enough copies to make the list. Other books who have had one good week yet never many books outside of a particular week have been best sellers. That’s why you see book launches where authors are trying to do a lot of media appearances and book signings in a single week’s time.
4) You don’t have to sell a lot of copies to make the New York Times best sellers list. Last week, for example, only four hardcover non-fiction titles sold more than 10,000 copies, of which Ted Cruz’s book was one. Nine fiction titles reached that mark last week. The New York Times also has a variety of different lists and categories that have really watered down the significance of making such a list.
5) The New York Times has responded to Cruz’s and Simon and Schuster’s claim that Cruz was intentionally left off of the list by contending that Cruz’s sales were mostly bulk sales through his PAC. While this may be true (Amazon has gone on record to say that they don’t see any indication that it is true), the Times does flag books that they deem as having heavy bulk sales with an asterisk (it actually looks like a cross). These books still make the list but receive a marking indicating bulk sales. The Times could have marked Cruz’s book in this manner but chose to leave it off altogether. Unfortunately, the Times isn’t always right when marking such book as they’ve marked several of our books in this manner that received no apparent bulk sales. At times it seems as if the Times thinks that if a Christian or conservative book sells well that it must be because of bulk sales, which isn’t the case.
So, should Ted Cruz’s book been included on the NY Times list? It would be hard to argue that it shouldn’t have been included. Even if he sold a number of copies through his PAC (he contends he did not), he certainly sold enough other copies to make the list. Interestingly, the attention that this has gotten will spike sales of Cruz’s book (it’s No. 32 on Amazon this hour) and it will very likely be on the list this week, although in a lower spot than where it should have debuted last week.
Pretty much on par with the standards it has upheld throughout its entire existence.
I bet they didn’t see any evidence of bulk sales for “Dreams From My Father” or “The Audacity of Hope”.
New York Times is forgetting ,with Computers things can be checked within seconds .
What’s black and white and red all over?
and its not the president.
What’s black and white and red all over?
and its not the president.
Outstanding elucidation of bestseller rankings! I learned something today.
Thanks, Glorgau.
In my view the MSM went from “strong liberal bias” to “full fledged members of the regime” in 2008.
Thanks for that interesting inside info! As a follow-up, do you happen to know if a.) Hillary’s and Obama’s books had a lot of bulk sales, and, b.) did they make the NYT list? If the answer is ‘yes’ to both, then Cruz should definitely use this as an opportunity to trash then NYT for the leftist rag it is.
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