Gaming the NYT Best Seller List

Oh, that was lovely. Yep; winning by cheating is not winning. This will probably be the only thing that author will ever be remembered for now.

YA author and blogger Claribel Ortega undergoes the hellish task of tweeting many passages of this book, so we don't have to. The writing...yowza. In comparison, Atlanta Nights is a huge leap up in quality. Livejournal circa 2002 called and wants its Mary Sues back.

https://storify.com/Claribel_Ortega/clarireadshandbook

I watched that go down on Twitter and it was extraordinary. I knew that politically conservative authors were known to move onto best seller lists through bulk buys, but didn't think we'd see the day it happened in YA.

That GeekNation thinks so little of YA, they thought this would fly... boggles my mind.

BenPanced said:

Lani Sarem claims she didn't game the system so I guess that makes it okay.

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By year-end, we will have appeared at a dozen events, and we plan to attend upwards of 40 of these confabs in 2018.

In order to sell books at these events, I had to have books to sell. If I had purchased the books directly from my distributor, Itasca Books, they would not count as sales for purposes of the New York Times list. If they were purchased from booksellers — brick and mortar or online — they would count

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LMAO. So putting aside the fact that she's admitting she purposely chose her actions with the goal of gaming the system for NYT sales credit, this argument would hold a lot more water if the orders had actually been able to be filled. If your end-goal is a pile of product to sell at an event, how is ordering an out-of-stock book helpful?

Also, she's claiming that a sales booth at a convention is a brand new sales method that nobody has ever thought of before. Umm, what about literally every other booth at every convention ever?

But hey, maybe she DID sell that many copies at conventions. In that case, I'm sure she has sales records to back up her claim...and loads of readers willing to come forward and say they bought her book...

(Also, I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of NYT reporting, is that true about buying the book directly from the distributor not counting? If so, why wouldn't it count?)

Tazlima said:

(Also, I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of NYT reporting, is that true about buying the book directly from the distributor not counting? If so, why wouldn't it count?)

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I'm unsure the origin of why NYT treats bulk sales differently, but throughout the reporting on this event, I've read that bulk sales are treated differently. Apparently some right-wing pundits regularly bulk-buy their own books and give them away to subscribers, which is how they appear on the NYT besteller list (but with an asterisk, as Ms. Sarem notes).

Didn't I read in the original breakdown that all of the sales were recorded in the week before the book was released? Doesn't sound like terribly good advanced planning if you were buying for a con tour.

Also, that's a lot of books for a con tour.

Also, I was at Wizard World Philadelphia in June, which was maybe before she was doing all of this hard-working promo; but Wizard World is very comic-and-video-game focused. Authors largely got lost there, although it was still a ton of fun.

Anna Iguana said:

I'm unsure the origin of why NYT treats bulk sales differently, but throughout the reporting on this event, I've read that bulk sales are treated differently. Apparently some right-wing pundits regularly bulk-buy their own books and give them away to subscribers, which is how they appear on the NYT besteller list (but with an asterisk, as Ms. Sarem notes).

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I understood that much. The way she phrased it though, it sounded like purchases from the distributors wouldn't be counted at all, as a bulk sale or otherwise. I was wondering if:

1) this was correct

2) If a bulk purchase from a distributor differed in some meaningful way (for reporting purposes) from a bulk purchase from a retail seller. (Because, for a simplified example, if a book was expected to be popular and retailers purchased it in mass quantities, only for it to end up a dud and sitting on the shelf, the argument could be made that the "sales" weren't there, even if the distributor made money. Or perhaps distributors don't report, because if they reported, and then the retailer reported their own sale of the same book, it would basically show two sales when in actuality, only one copy of the book reached the end user. Something like that).

Does that make sense?

The short answer to your questions, I think, is that they can't easily be answered because the NYT considers the calculation of its lists a trade secret.

Anna Iguana said:

The short answer to your questions, I think, is that they can't easily be answered because the NYT considers the calculation of its lists a trade secret.

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Ah, that would certainly explain a lot. Thanks!

Apparently, according to an update on pajiba.com, there may be a lawsuit over the cover art too. The artist who did the cover was told to do an homage to the piece "The Knifethrower" by Gill Del Mace and was told full attribution would be made to the original artist. The agent of the original artist says no attribution was made, nor were they ever contacted about it.

It also sounds like the plan the entire time was to get it on the NYT Bestseller list in order to get funding to make a movie out of the story. (also interestingly enough, the movie already has an IMDB page, and lists the book's author as the female lead.)

Wonder if in twelve years we're going to see an arty biopic of Lani Sarem from James Franco and Anna Faris?

With James Franco in the lead role as Sarem.

In a blonde wig with rainbow tips.

ShaunHorton said:

Apparently, according to an update on pajiba.com, there may be a lawsuit over the cover art too. The artist who did the cover was told to do an homage to the piece "The Knifethrower" by Gill Del Mace and was told full attribution would be made to the original artist. The agent of the original artist says no attribution was made, nor were they ever contacted about it.

It also sounds like the plan the entire time was to get it on the NYT Bestseller list in order to get funding to make a movie out of the story. (also interestingly enough, the movie already has an IMDB page, and lists the book's author as the female lead.)

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*something pithy about eggs, chickens, horses, and carts*

Has anybody heard anything from the publisher? It's all been from bloggers, pundits, and Sarem herself but I'm curious as to what GeekNation has to say about it.

This gets worse. If you read down into the comments on The Mary Sue article here: https://www.themarysue.com/handbook-for-mortals-hate-u-give/

...You'll see that 'Handbook' appears to have started out as a real-person fanfic based off 'Twilight'.

Ugh.

I don't know if this has been linked yet, but Jenny Trout is going through 'Handbook' for her Jealous Haters Book Club. http://jennytrout.com/?p=11574