Buying Your Way Onto the NY Times Bestsellers List

Freshly Exhumed writes "An endorsement from Oprah Winfrey; a film deal from Steven Spielberg; a debut at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list. These are the things every author craves most. While the first two require the favor of a benevolent deity, the third can be had by anyone with the ability to write a check — a pretty big one, to ResultSource, a San Diego-based marketing consultancy — in what Forbes says is essentially a laundering operation aimed at deceiving the book-buying public into believing a title is more in-demand than it is. Soren Kaplan, a business consultant and speaker, hired ResultSource to promote his book Leapfrogging. Responding to the WSJ article on his website, Kaplan breaks out the economics of making the list. 'It's no wonder few people in the industry want to talk about bestseller campaigns,' he writes. 'Put bluntly, they allow people with enough money, contacts, and know-how to buy their way onto bestseller lists.'"

Re:I, Libertine

[Anonymous Coward]

Shepherd tells the story of the hoax here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tCfVhsTj-E [youtube.com]

Scientology tactics become mainstream

[ReallyEvilCanine]

The Criminal Cult of Scientology has been doing this for decades [latimes.com]. The only surprise is how long it took others to start.