After The New York Times came under fire from conservatives last week for leaving Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) memoir off its best-seller list, citing evidence of attempts to artificially inflate sales, the online retail giant Amazon told Politico on Sunday it found no proof of such tactics.
Conservatives cried liberal media when news broke that Cruz’s “A Time For Truth” wouldn’t appear on the Times’ best-seller list, despite Nielsen putting its sales at nearly 12,000 copies in its first week – higher sales than 18 of the 20 books that appeared on the list that week.
But an Amazon spokeswoman disputed the Times’ findings, telling Politico, “There is no evidence of unusual bulk purchase activity in our sales data.” The memoir remained the 13th best-selling book on the site yesterday. A Barnes & Noble spokesperson also told CNNMoney that the company had not seen evidence of bulk-buying of Cruz’s book.
Amazon’s statement further muddies the Times’ explanation for the book’s omission – that, when the paper of record analyzed sales patterns to compile the list, “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”
A Times spokesperson defended the paper’s decision to CNN on Monday.
“The notion that we would manipulate the bestseller list to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous,” the spokesperson reportedly told CNN, citing Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck as conservative authors who have performed highly on the list.
HarperCollins, Cruz’s publisher, challenged the Times’ claims last week, saying it sound no evidence of bulk ordering “through any retailer or organization.”
Cruz’s campaign has been quick to capitalize on the feud, painting the Gray Lady’s decision as a partisan-fueled snub last week.
“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response – alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’ – is a blatant falsehood,” Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said in a statement on Friday. “We call on the Times, release your so-called ‘evidence.’”
Why would the NYT do this and lie about what they believed? There’s pretty much no better way they could have helped him sell books than to create this whole scenario. Anyone who can’t understand that is dumb enough to eat from the kitty box.
“Conservatives cried liberal media when…”
That is all the article needs to say. Snooooooooozzzzzzzzefest 2015.
The problem is that those are book sellers who don’t normally deal in bulk orders, from what I’ve been able to find out.
The poor Republicans. Always the victims. Always.
The NYT found that a right-wing group paid individuals to buy the book in a vain attempt to circumvent the bulk-buying tag.