海角大神

Ted Cruz has a new book out 鈥� a memoir/campaign manifesto titled 鈥淎 Time for Truth.鈥� Published on June 30, it sold about 12,000 copies in its first week, which is pretty good nowadays for a tome that doesn鈥檛 have 鈥渟hades鈥� or 鈥済ray鈥� on its cover.

Despite these sales, The New York Times has told publisher HarperCollins it won鈥檛 put 鈥淭ime for Truth鈥� on its nonfiction bestseller list. The problem isn鈥檛 overall numbers. On those, 鈥淭ime鈥� would rank second or maybe even first. The issue is that the NYT deems those numbers somewhat squishy.

鈥淚n the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases,鈥� Times spokeswomen Eileen Murphy told Politico.

In other words, the Times editors have evidence that those sales didn鈥檛 all come from individual supporters camped out in line at a Walmart book signing. Institutions, presumably conservative organizations of some sort, may have just cut a check for hundreds of copies at a time.

Well, we鈥檝e got some comments on that. The first is surprise, surprise. Bulk sales of political books to supporters have been common for years, decades even. There are lots of reasons this would be the case, from genuine enthusiasm to a desire to back a favored politician鈥檚 campaign.

Sometimes this crosses lines. Remember Jim Wright? He was a veteran Texas Democrat who served as Speaker of the House from 1987 to 1989. He was forced to resign after the House Ethics Committee reported that, among other things, he鈥檇 used bulk purchases of a book of his speeches to evade House limits on certain kinds of outside income.

Second, we don鈥檛 really know if Times editors are just dissing Senator Cruz because they don鈥檛 like his politics. There are other books on the bestseller list by conservative authors, such as Ann Coulter鈥檚 鈥淎dios, America.鈥� That鈥檚 evidence against the conspiracy theory. On the other hand, the Times process for determining bestseller rankings is opaque. Editors say they keep the methodology secret so people won鈥檛 try to game the system. But people try that anyway 鈥� there are publishing consulting firms who specialize in using bulk-buying and other techniques to boost books onto bestseller lists.

But finally, isn鈥檛 the existence of this controversy actually better for Cruz than would be any sales gained from NYT list exposure? It鈥檚 not like Times readers are his people. The paper is the flagship of the mainstream media that conservatives love to hate. Right-leaning sites such as RedState have picked up the story and are thus providing him some free advertising to boost the book.

And now鈥檚 a good time for Cruz to get a media push. He鈥檚 hanging in at No. 8 on the RealClearPolitics polling list of GOP contenders. He needs to hold that position to make the first GOP debate, which is Aug. 6, now only a few weeks away.