Obama Adviser’s Book Is Ranked 1,030 On Amazon. How Did It Make NYT’s Best Seller List?
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.
Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to former President Barack Obama, published a book that ranks dismally on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble, but was placed on The New York Times Best Seller list. Anomalies around the book’s sales figures in industry databases have some in the book business questioning whether Jarrett, who’s rumored to have received a million-dollar-plus advance, paid a company to game the numbers. Her book, which was published April 2, is number 1,030 on Amazon’s list of top sellers and has only three reviews on the site. It similarly ranks 1,244 on Barnes and Noble where signed copies are being sold for less than the suggested retail for unsigned copies.
Yet the book was also 14th on the NYT bestseller list. “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. According to BookScan data, Jarrett’s book “Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward,” sold 12,600 copies in its first week, more than twice as many as the book ranked immediately above it on NYT’s list. The books in NYT’s fifth through 13th slots sold between 4,300 and 9,000 copies. NYT creates its own estimate of book sales from sampling book stores and also adjusts placements higher or lower for various reasons. NYT did not return a request for comment.
Even more baffling to book world insiders, the Publishers Weekly bestsellers list, which is based on BookScan data, omitted Jarrett’s book from their list of top 25 titles, even though it seemingly should have been seventh. “This is the first time that I’ve seen a book that doesn’t show up on the PW list but when you drill into BookScan, you see that it had sales that should have been there,” president of the conservative book publisher Regnery, Marji. The book editor that requested anonymity told TheDCNF: “We all know that when Bookscan excludes a book, then it’s been left off because of something sketchy, a bunch of bulk sales or an unusual geographic spread.” Ross, said. The first industry expert added, “There are some industry sources who don’t think she should be on the list because of fraudulent reporting.” NPD, the company that compiles the BookScan data, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Publishers Weekly. Publicists with Jarrett’s book publisher, Viking, who normally are proactively engaged with the media around a book launch, did not return request for comment on behalf of itself and Jarrett.
https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/04/14/valerie-jarrett-book-manipulation/