Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax complains in a March 30 article:
Jerome Corsi's red-hot new book "Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump" is a runaway bestseller — but you'd never know that from reading The New York Times.
"Killing the Deep State" debuted last week at No. 10 on the non-fiction hardcover list compiled by Nielsen BookScan, the book industry's only nationally recognized sales tracking list.
And yet, the influential New York Times Book Review inexplicably has not listed "Deep State" on its hardcover bestseller list, despite the fact it outsold many of the books that did make its list.
[...]
Now Newsmax has learned that the Times has snubbed "Deep State" on its April 8 bestseller list as well.
Its second week of phenomenal sales should have put "Killing the Deep State" in the No. 5 position on the Times' list. But you won't see it there, either, despite having sold more than double the amount of copies of many others that are listed by the Times.
What Newsmax isn't telling you: As we noted the last time some right-wing author tried to play this game, the Times list generally downgrades titles driven by bulk sales. Corsi's book most certainly is that, given that Newsmax is currently selling it at a deep discount as a promotional tool to boost subscriptions to Newsmax's magazine.
Surprisingly, Newsmax did disclose that it owns Humanix Books, which published the Corsi book. Which means that Newsmax basically sold a lot of those books to itself, and we're guessing Newsmax didn't pay itself the retail price on those books. Vox reports that the Times also downgrades books sold outside traditional sales channels; selling books to yourself is definitely that.
If you have to sell books to yourself to pump up sales, it's not really a bestseller -- and that appears to be the Times' justification for not including the book on its list. Newsmax will never admit that, of course -- otherwise, it would have to concede all the self-dealing it's doing to falsely jack up sales.
