'Unfit for Command': a hot potato for booksellers

[quaoar]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0910/p11s01-bogn.html

By Teresa Méndez | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Last month, when "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" - a book questioning the details of Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam - failed to materialize on bookstore shelves, the conspiracy theories began to fly.

Frustrated customers bombarded bookstores with phone calls, cries of liberal bias, and accusations of censorship. They pointed to prominent displays of Bill Clinton's memoirs, "My Life," and Maureen Dowd's "Bushworld" as blatant examples of how left-leaning the industry has become.

< snip >

And indeed, there was evidence of partisan foul play - but it appeared to be coming from the other end of the political spectrum. In a few instances, booksellers received requests for multiple copies of "Unfit for Command," but found disconnected numbers when they called back to confirm.

That's when countertheories started to swirl, suggesting that savvy and defiant readers were placing bogus bulk orders at strategic bookstores to boost the book's ranking on The New York Times bestseller list.

[Kimber Scott]

1. Gawd, is anything real anymore? I want to go home, Toto.

I want to go home!

[pscot]

6. We can arrange that

Be on the beach on Key West on Monday morning. You'll be picked up.

[Kimber Scott]

7. ROFLMAO!

nt

[napi21]

2. Holy Sh*T! I thought I was pretty creative, but I never thought of that!

I guess I'm guilty of just being too damn honest again! I thought if you placed a bluk order, you'd be asked for a credit card # or something of validation! What the heck did they do, say they were Walmart???

[RevCheesehead]

4. well, sure. How else could Swifties fly to #1 so fast?

Either that, or Rupert bought a butt-load.
(on second thought, Rupert IS a ... never mind.)

:

[Generic Other]

3. We are dealing with pros here

Being on DU these past few years has opened my eyes to the magnitude of the con being perpetrated against me.

[GOPAgainstGW]

5. Gee Glad Christian Science Monitor read DU threads. THAT IS

almost to the letter exactly what I posted on this matter.

Also the GOP ops continue to buying the hell out of that rag to keep it at the top of the charts.

------------------------------
Beltway and Texas Republicans
Against Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.
------------------------------
"Insider’s News”, Vol 1 - Kerry-Edwards Campaign Doing Well
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x748458
“Insider’s News” Vol 1.1 - Great Anti-Bush Sites
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x756409

[0007]

8. Just like the Tom DeLay crowd in Florida storming the recounting

officials and demanding justice. The freepers are good at playing these games. I hope more people read this article than ignore it, because this is where the meat it.

Check this video out.

http://BushLies2.Us/video/wmv/bush_awol_cbs.wmv

[robbedvoter]

9. I remember a pic of the RNC convention where all delegates had a copy

Some of the bulk orders must've been real - I bet that trash got distributed to delegates with the stupid band aids

[Jane Eyre]

10. Some bookselling background here

Most bookstores, such as the major chains Borders and Barnes & Noble, do not require prepayment of any kind when ordering books from distributors. It is pretty much standard in the retail book business from a competitive customer service viewpoint, but there is also a financial reason that this is possible. Bookstores can return unsold books to the publishers for full credit. While that does not mean that ordering books that will never be sold does not incur some cost on the retail level (such as labor for shipping the books back and the cost of having the books occupy floor space), the majority of the costs are borne by the publisher.

Sometimes a publisher will work out a deal with the retailers to mark down a book to try to increase sales when too many unsold books are in the stores and not moving. These are called "shared markdowns." You will see yesterday's bestsellers marked down 50% on an endcap - that is what is going on here. The publisher and retailer are trying to sell books that are no longer frontlist titles and are sitting in mountains in the store's backrooms. When the shared markdown doesn't move enough books, the extra books end up as "remainders". Those are the bargain books at the front of the big box stores.

Rightwingers found out long ago that they can rig the system by ordering huge numbers of books from retailers, thus driving up the sales figures at no risk of getting caught. The Scientologists figured this game out long ago, which is why the crappy L. Ron Hubbard books popped up so often despite the fact that they didn't really sell that well on a retail level. Bestselling numbers are largely based on wholesale orders, and the NYT list is based upon sales at certain secret chosen stores. If a rightwinger can figure out which stores to place bulk orders in, they can drive a book on to the bestseller list pronto.

[PartyPooper]

11. Thanks for such an enlightening post!

:thumbsup:

[whalerider55]

13. reminds me of an old saying...

in the record business:

"the album shipped gold, but came back platinum..."

whalerider55

[Tangledog]

15. Thanks, Jane Eyre!

The book business is complicated as hell, that's for sure.

I remember reading as far back as the 1980s that William F. Buckley figured out how to make the system work for him. He sent National Review employees to a local bookstore that he knew to be on the New York Times Book Review survey, and had them buy large quantities of his books. That way, they'd show action on the NYT best seller list, which would in turn generate sales, making the initial layout a good investment.

This was for his spy novels, and it was a business decision. Somebody at the bookstore finally figured out that the same people came in all the time to buy copies of Saving the Queen, and the Times made a change in how they scored their best seller list.

The Freepers have turned this relatively innocent goosing of the system into a way of promoting their favored authors and giving them credibility that their garbled facts and fetid emotional tone would fail to garner otherwise.

I have no way of documenting the real readership of current-events books, but I have the distinct impression that Freep tomes don't get nearly the library circulation that, say, Joe Conason's Big Lies got, never mind Nickel and Dimed, which I think still has a waiting list.

[skooooo]

12. CS Monitor is a credible source too..

...unlike the Drudge Report.

[Placebo]

14. It's on sale in my College Bookstore!

didn't see anyone buying it though

[brentspeak]

16. For two weeks, we were accused of hiding the books from customers

I work at a Barnes & Noble, and the first couple weeks of the book's release had us being verbally abused by weirdos who apparently were Sean Hannity listeners.

Here was a typical exchange:

Me: "I'm sorry, sir, but we are currently out of stock." (which, of course, was the case)

Customer: "Don't feed me that line! You're hiding the book because you and your company don't want the truth to be known."


Regnery publishing cut our company's order in half at the last minute, so we and every other store received only a few copies. And Hannity and all the other RW shills encouraged their listeners to complain to bookstore managers about "hiding the book in their receiving". One old guy actually tried to force his way into our receiving area! Some other guy jabbed his finger threatingly right in the face of one of our teenage booksellers, calling her a "liberal liar", making her burst out in tears. We called the cops, but the idiot took off.

[mistertrickster]

17. At least he didn't say "communist" liar. That's the former bugabear

they used to fulminate against.

Now they just have to settle for this new enemy.

Neo-cons control the pResidency, the Congress, and the SCOTUS, but it is we damned LIBERALS who control what people can read and what they should think.

Absolutely nuts, aren't they . . .

[demoman123]

18. Scientology does something like this with L Ron Hubbard's books

Only they actually buy them, or make their members buy multiple copies.