Patterico's Pontifications

7/13/2015

Amazon Agrees With HarperCollins About The Ted Cruz Book Sales, Time For The NYT To Come Clean (UPDATE: NYT Spokeswoman Responds To Amazon’s Claims)

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:51 am



[guest post by Dana]

This morning, Dylan Byers has a follow-up on the exclusion of the Ted Cruz book from the NYT best seller list:

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.

From the book’s literary agent:

“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.”

On Friday evening, after NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan made inquiry about the fracas, NYT spokeswoman Eileen Murphy was still sticking to her “story”:

First off, the notion that we would manipulate the best-seller list to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous. Conservative authors have routinely ranked high on our lists — Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, most recently Ann Coulter, just for a few examples. I can’t speak to HarperCollins’s statements — though obviously they want their authors to appear on our list — but we do a detailed analysis of sales every week. We’ve been doing this a long time, and we apply our standards consistently across the board. We are confident in our conclusion about the sales patterns for the Cruz book.

We aren’t going to discuss the details of how we do our analysis, since the whole point is to try to minimize the possibility that people can manipulate the numbers.

And we run our methodology with the list online.

The Cruz campaign has demanded a public apology from the NYT or proof to back up their claims. In the same way that Murphy claimed “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases”, we’ll see how she responds to this latest “overwhelming preponderance of evidence” that clearly contradicts her claims as to why Cruz’s book was, and is, excluded from the bestseller list.

–Dana

UPDATE: NYT spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy continues to give Cruz’s book an unintended boost in sales as she pushes back against HarperCollins, and now Amazon:

“The Times’s best-seller lists are based on a detailed analysis each week of book sales from a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context for their sales,” newspaper spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in an e-mailed statement. “We are confident in our conclusion about the sales patterns for the Cruz book for the week in question.”

“Our system is designed to detect anomalies and patterns that are typical of attempts to manipulate the rankings,” Ms. Murphy said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time and we apply our standards consistently, across the board.”

54 Responses to “Amazon Agrees With HarperCollins About The Ted Cruz Book Sales, Time For The NYT To Come Clean (UPDATE: NYT Spokeswoman Responds To Amazon’s Claims)”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (86e864)

  2. If the NYT had to apologize every time it was called out for lying, it wouldn’t have time to do anything else.

    Except, er, lie. And then apologize. And then…

    Well, you get it.

    Steve57 (4c9797)

  3. Sarah Gelman is a straight shooter

    whereas Eileen Murphy is a liar

    which one would you believe?

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  4. If the NY Times would admit that they are an arm of the Democratic Party, then I would at least give them credit for honesty. As things are, however, it’s Liar, Liar, pants etc.

    Bar Sinister (b48c12)

  5. We are confident in our conclusion about the sales patterns for the Cruz book.

    Just as they were confident in the reliability and accuracy of Jayson Blair, and are confident in their belief that liberal biases don’t sully the hard-news pages of the “newspaper of record.” Yea, uh-huh, we can truly trust the claims of the New York Times.

    Mark (aa035f)

  6. Two things about this amaze me. First, that the New York Times thinks it can say anything. And, second, that it takes so few sales to make a bestseller list. We are not a nation that reads books anymore.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  7. re OP: The NYT considers Bill O’Reilly a conservative? The guy on Fox?

    re #6: I don’t think it ever took that much to make Best Sellers list, as least in popular hardcover.
    There is also the matter of how many people actually read the books on the lists.

    seeRpea (187ee2)

  8. ==We are not a nation that reads books anymore.==

    Sadly, I think you are largely right. However, many of us use public and university libraries rather than purchasing books. Also, there is a tremendous secondary market for books both on Amazon and Ebay as well as used bookstores all over the place and Goodwill book departments which are often amazing. None of those book sales “count” except for the first time, I would imagine.

    elissa (1fa22f)

  9. “Time For The NYT To Come Clean”, Yeah, right… you just made a funny!!

    Roman (0bfd6d)

  10. The Times still has not gotten over the humiliation when nobody bought Hillary’s book.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  11. reading has for reals been trending lower for several years now but I think this explains more better what we’re seeing with these lists

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  12. First off, the notion that we would manipulate the best-seller list to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous.

    My favorite part of all of these tortured defenses is that they always begin with this type of statement. That is apparently supposed to be code for “Sure we are all a bunch of left-wing activists who mindlessly parrot the progressive agenda (though we think of ourselves as being sane moderates because we all pretend to like Hillary Clinton more than Bernie Sanders, even though we don’t), but we would never — never I tell you — violate the sanctity of our Book Review section for purely partisan or ideological purposes.” As if any of us are going to believe that there is a shred of ethics in that building where pushing the left’s agenda is involved.

    JVW (8278a3)

  13. Last I checked, Beck, O’Reilly and Coulter weren’t running for the office of POTUS.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  14. Those “dumb” conservatives sure read a lot of books!

    This is quite scary to the NYT.

    Patricia (5fc097)

  15. Not a whole lot of newspapers to read.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  16. They should rename it to the “New York Times Best Sanitized List”

    EPWJ (b2d521)

  17. Colonel at 13 beat me to it.

    Gazzer (ee3742)

  18. Say, didn’t the NYT a few years ago react to the fact that their beloved best seller list was dominated for months at a time with books from conservative authors decide that such books would no longer be eligible for inclusion in the best seller list and were instead relegated to the “self-help” list? Why, yes that is exactly what they did.

    in_awe (7c859a)

  19. Making any book list these days is easy. Look at the Sad Puppies nontroversy. A few hundred votes were all it took to sweep the awards nominations.

    It’s how the leftists keep control. They don’t have numbers. Instead, they keep everyone disengaged and use the illusion of numbers to influence the apathetic majority.

    njrob (d48106)

  20. There could have been a bulk purchase at one of the stores the New York times uses, but not through Amazon. It could also be that the New York Times just disregarded the whole thing even though it still be a best seller even without the bulk purchase(s)

    Sammy Finkelman (643dcd)

  21. That brings back memories, Kevin M. Breathed wrote his first strip The Academia Waltz was for the Daily Texan when I was a student at UT. Good times.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  22. The most likely result of this is that Cruz’s book will show up somewhere near the bottom of the NYT best sellers list for a couple of weeks, so that the NYT can say in the future: “See, we weren’t biased!”

    Joshua (9ede0e)

  23. I agree the Times will ultimately put the book on the list. How many weeks it waits to do that will tell us how long Cruz’s book is a bestseller.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  24. ……We are not a nation that reads books anymore.

    DRJ (1dff03) — 7/13/2015 @ 8:09 am

    I’m not sure how true that is, given the proliferation of e-reading options. Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, Twilight, Divergent, … etc. – lots of people read books today. However, there is a lot of competition for reading time, like videogames and such.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-decline-of-the-american-book-lover/283222/

    I once had a business trade book more or less written and ready to go. After running the numbers, I might have sold a whopping 40,000 units if it was a huge hit. More likely I would have sold 12-15,000 units. It’s not the biggest universe in the world.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  25. carlitos,

    According to Pew, American adults still primarily read books in print. The median number of books read is 5.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  26. The median number of books read per year is 5.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  27. Off topic but I’m glad Walker has officially joined the GOP race. I think he will be a good competitor and adds to the Republican Party.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  28. No kidding. The Pew survey is embedded in the Atlantic article that I linked. The mean books-per-year is 12, and the median is 5.

    If you would have read my link further, you would have seen from an NEA survey that young people were reading books for pleasure at the same rate in 2014 as they were in 2002. The decline isn’t nearly as simple as saying “we aren’t a nation that reads books” anymore.

    carlitos (c24ed5)

  29. The New York Times may end up putting Cruz on the list at some point in time, but it doesn’t mean that they should not be compelled to apologize and or offer proof for what they claim to be true. The pressure should not let up and the public editor should be overwhelmed with emails pointing out that Eileen Murphy has been less than honest and certainly without any transparency. And it should be shouted from the rooftops that this all points to lying to the public for the sake of blatant partisanship. Clearly, the NYT is concerned about Ted Cruz. This opening should be taken to advantage of by conservatives.

    Dana (d85ff0)

  30. A fair question to the NYT: What other books have been kept off the best-seller’s list for this reason? If the answer is, as I suspect, “None,” that would look really bad. If there’s been a bunch, across a broad range of author ideologies/genres, then it looks less suspicious.

    Matt S (f70cda)

  31. Did they ever apologize for Duranty??

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  32. Mr. Governor Scott Walker is the meow of the cat and he is also the knees of the bees.

    This is obvious to anyone who is willing to do the analysis.

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  33. Mr. Governor Scott Walker is the meow of the cat

    Also its whiskers and pyjamas.

    and he is also the knees of the bees.

    This is obvious to anyone who is willing to do the analysis.

    Indeed it is.

    Milhouse (7d5ad7)

  34. Not to mention the bollocks of the dog.

    Milhouse (7d5ad7)

  35. Actually, make that “…to say nothing of the bollocks of the dog”. For he is also the boat that carries many more than three men, and may yet carry the nation (but please to leave the booze alone).

    Milhouse (7d5ad7)

  36. MD, of course not. But given that we are in the age of the internet, there is more power to pressure and to denounce the paper. They, along with all other newspapers are struggling to get subscribers and make a profit. I think the right just needs to take advantage of every opportunity of dishonesty they provide to point the finger at them.

    The NYT Eileen Murphy has responded to Amazon’s agreement with Harper Collins’s assessment:

    The Times’s best-seller lists are based on a detailed analysis each week of book sales from a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context for their sales,” newspaper spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in an e-mailed statement. “We are confident in our conclusion about the sales patterns for the Cruz book for the week in question.”

    Our system is designed to detect anomalies and patterns that are typical of attempts to manipulate the rankings,” Ms. Murphy said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time and we apply our standards consistently, across the board.”

    Dana (d85ff0)

  37. I will update the post when I get to a computer.

    Murphy sure isn’t big on transparency. With this latest statement, she continues to refuse to put this to rest and instead seems to want to cast further doubt of her honesty while impeaching further the already tarnished reputation of the NYT.

    Dana (d85ff0)

  38. so basically it’s the ‘argument clinic’ with her,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  39. of course not. But given that we are in the age of the internet, there is more power to pressure and to denounce the paper.

    True.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  40. The second (or third or fourth or whatever it is on) printing of Cruz’s book should carry a big banner on the cover reading “Not a NY Times bestseller!”

    JVW (8278a3)

  41. That is pretty much a non-response response.

    JD (3b5483)

  42. Didn’t Murphy just open up the NYT to a lawsuit? She just accused HarperCollins of cheating the system of sellers lists.

    seeRpea (181740)

  43. I have read that yes HarperCollins has a case if they press it, unless the NYT can produce evidence. (I think PowerLine)

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  44. This will boil down to how much Harper Collins wants to get into a pi$$ing war with NYT and whether they think pushing this will ultimately help them or hurt them long term as a book publisher/seller which obviously wants future books on the Best Seller list.

    elissa (1fa22f)

  45. i’m a go on a hungry strike until there is justice for Mr. Senator Cruz to where he gets on the list

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  46. carlitos:

    28.No kidding. The Pew survey is embedded in the Atlantic article that I linked. The mean books-per-year is 12, and the median is 5.

    If you would have read my link further, you would have seen from an NEA survey that young people were reading books for pleasure at the same rate in 2014 as they were in 2002. The decline isn’t nearly as simple as saying “we aren’t a nation that reads books” anymore.

    I should have acknowledged that my Pew link came from your Atlantic link, but I thought we both knew that since we both read your link. Based on your comment, now I’m not so sure since you seem to be arguing there has been no decline in Americans who read books, despite the fact that your link is entitled “The Decline of the American Book Lover” and the first paragraph states:

    The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978.

    I admit the Pew study states the rate of book readers has stayed the same since 2002. That doesn’t strike me as much of a trend since American illiteracy has also stayed constant during that period. The period from 1900-1979 saw great gains in American literacy, that stabilized in the 1980’s. I can speculate regarding why that happened, but it’s not surprising that literacy has not changed since 2002 given that trend.

    So this doesn’t change my feeling that people don’t read books the way they used to, but you are of course entitled to have a different feeling.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  47. I remember something similar to this in that the top ten books on the list were left wing and books that were higher on Amazon, but conservative were placed at the bottom of the list. I think it had to do with Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin.

    Tanny O'Haley (c674c7)

  48. Amazon is smart to come out so quickly with information about Cruz’s book. Replacing the New York Times as the ultimate decider of America’s bestselling books would be quite a coup. The executives at Nielsen’s BookScan should do the same, but their product is subscription-based so they probably won’t. That may be smart in the short-term, but I doubt it will pay off in the long-term.

    DRJ (1dff03)

  49. “wide range of retailers”…
    Translation: Reliable Lefty’s that would never recommend, or even stock, a book by someone in the VRWC.

    askeptic (efcf22)

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