[wp381640]

I have a story about a well-known "best selling" author

Some years ago received a random package in the mail - turns out it was 40+ copies of this authors new book. Had no idea what to do with them so they just sat around, I never even read it

A few days later I notice some blogs running giveaways for the same book - figure they got deliveries of it as well. Go to a conference and in conversation find that a bunch of people also got the same package

I didn't put together until years later that this is all part of self-sales to boost best seller rankings.

Apparently if you know which book stores are surveyed by the NYTimes you can call them up and order a handful of copies of your own book and boost your own sales

It's no coincidence that this author heavily pitches themselves as a multiple-NYTimes best seller. It likely pays off because I have a good idea of what their appearance fee is and it's mid-5 figures+

[TheOtherHobbes]

The same thing used to happen in the UK music charts. Sales were tracked in a small number of stores and then interpolated.

So of course record companies and sometimes artists would make sure there were big orders at those stores. And a lot of very bad records became unexpected chart toppers.