Shameless Cheaters

Posted on 09/15/2009 at 10:46 pm by Bob Cesca

I caught this headline on Drudge:

Mark Levin Book Hits One Million in Sales; Never Reviewed by NYT, WASHINGTON POST…

You know why it hit one million in sales? Because think tanks and wealthy conservative operatives bulk purchase copies. Mark Levin was a big nobody on the radio, and I’m sure there are a considerable number of conservatives who have no idea who this adenoidal high talker even is. There’s just no way he sold that many books on the merits of his cookie-cutter wingnut radio show.

Anyway — and this goes for Malkin, too — it takes a special kind of weasel to ballyhoo meeelions and meeelions in sales when the numbers are inflated by bulk sales. Integrity!

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  • http://nanotyrnns.blogspot.com/ Nanotyrannus

    There has to be a way to track the sales. There has to be an industry breakdown somewhere of how many sales were point-of-sale bookstore purchases and how many Amazon, etc. etc.Who here has written a book that might know where to find such info…hmmmm…

  • El Mystico

    Bob, did you ever stop to think that maybe each of the million people at the 9/12 rally stopped at the nearest B&N to snag a copy?Nano, usually the NYT best seller list puts a little dagger symbol next to a title when there are bulk buys involved. You’ll notice it next to Anne Coulter’s name.

  • cvoge

    Mark Levin makes Sean Hannity & Rush Limbaugh look sane. This man is certifiable. Whack-Job times 1,000,000,000.

  • Alex00

    I’m a little surprised Drudge isn’t going ape shit over this ACORN thing right now.

  • J

    I work in publishing. We do have internal systems that allow us to break down sales, but not all houses do. Even if they do, I can’t imagine Mark Levin’s publisher would want to release that info publicly.But regardless, if I had to count the amount of books that sell over a million copies that NYT, Post, etc. never reviewed, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else. The idea that what the Times reviews is remotely related to what’s selling is so fallacious that I can’t even wrap my brain around it.

  • http://broadwaycarl.blogspot.com Broadway Carl

    Believe it or not, I was sitting next to someone in the subway a few weeks ago who was intently reading a book. Curious, I maneuvered my way around to take a look at the cover. It was Levin’s book. I looked at the guy, gave an audible, “Ugh” and rolled my eyes as I walked away.

  • tikihoodoo

    One possible reason why Levin’s book is doing so well is that Amazon is apparently pushing the hell out of it. Amazon generally prides itself on being able to give you individual personalized recommendations based on your browsing and buying history. But lately when I log into them they are recommending the usual comprehensible choices with the addition of books by Levin, Malkin, Morris, Beck, ad infinitum ad nauseum. Nothing in my history even remotely suggests that I would be interested in any book by any of these whackos. I even sent them an email complaining about it but it hasn’t really helped. They are determined to push these books for some reason.

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    tikihoodoo, Amazon pushes books for publishers who pay to have them pushed. IOW, when you see those ads it just means the same apparatus doing the bulk buys is also paying for prominence on the site.I want to see the think tanks and wealthy sponsors go broke doing crap like this.

  • Lexaburn

    I’ve attended events where these wingnut books were being given away in the lobby of hotels and office buildings. Quite the operation they’ve got going on there.Admittedly, I’ve bought a couple of Coulter’s books, though (Godless, and If Democrats had any brains…yadda, yadda, yadda). They were okay, as far as wingnut fiction goes. I sampled O’Reilly’s “Culture Warrior,” and it quickly became apparent that O’Reilly suffers a severe superiority complex. He’s completely delusional, and yes, he’s a coward that hides his behind insincere, repetitive platitudes he doles out piously. It’s pathetic.With Coulter’s books, at least, you get the sense that she’s just a jilted professional striking back at her superiors, and with that, it can all be seen as true entertainment. However, with O’Reilly you get the sense that he is completely serious and has a swelled head and sees himself as a savior to…someone. The people that watch his show, I suppose.I won’t even dare to dignify the literary filth that is a Sean Vannity/Mark Levin tome, both of which are exactly the same. The only thing Vannity knows how to do is play the petulant Republigoon on TV and radio, he can’t write worth a damn, so he relies on ghostwriters like Palin on her Facebook page and those WSJ articles.