The next presidential election battleground may not be where you expect—not Iowa, not New Hampshire, but the pages of the New York Times bestseller list.
Over the last week presidential candidate Ted Cruz has gleefully duked it out with the New York Times, waging a very public battle against the paper arguing that it purposely excluded his new memoir from its bestseller list. A Time for Truth had appeared on the rankings compiled by both the Wall Street Journal and Barnes & Noble, but was conspicuously absent from the list in the Times, which maintained that the book was excluded because most of its sales had come from “strategic bulk purchases.”
This book cover image released by Broadside books, "A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Miracle of... [+]
The Cruz campaign insinuated that there was foul play afoot. A campaign spokesman released a statement Friday saying “We call on the Times, release your so-called evidence. Demonstrate that your charge isn’t simply a naked fabrication, designed to cover up your own partisan agenda.”
And then yesterday, the Gray Lady folded, adding Cruz to its coveted list in the seventh slot, according to Politico.
The New York Times bestseller list has a long history of attracting controversy. Founded in the thirties, it codifies the 100 bestselling books in the United States in any given week, using a mysterious formula as closely guarded as a state secret. Making it on to the list is the ne plus ultra for tweedy authors and aspiring writers, because it brings increased sales and higher visibility among the liberal intelligentsia who read the Times cover to cover every morning. It comes as no surprise then that authors sometimes pay a small fortune to make their way onto the list. Forbes published an article two years ago called “How You Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List,” about a San Diego marketing firm that guaranteed clients a place for a hefty fee.
Where do politics come into play? Conservative pundits often attack the Times for embodying everything wrong with the liberal media. The Cruz debacle was no different. Over the last week the conservative blogosphere added to the chorus critiquing the Times, one author pointing out that although Cruz was excluded from the list, Hillary Clinton made it on for 13 weeks.
Media commentators have long analyzed book sales and rankings to glean whether Americans (read potential voters) have wanted to hear more about various candidates. Hillary Clinton reintroduced herself to America last summer with her 656-page tome Hard Choices, a brisk account of her tumultuous tenure at the State Department. The book performed well, but its sales were scrutinized nonstop. Hard Choices made it onto the Times bestseller list, but sales dropped sharply after its release—a sign, some said, that America had tired of her story.
Other politicians, from John McCain to Bill Clinton, have also dovetailed their book releases with upcoming presidential bids—and again, their sales have been scrutinized for evidence of how the electorate would respond at the ballot box. Faith of My Fathers, which McCain published shortly before his presidential bid in 2000, unexpectedly performed very well, making it onto the Times bestseller list and spawning a TV movie and several sequels. Its success presaged a startling political ascent as McCain surged in the polls for the Republican primaries in 2000.
The supposed relationship between the way a book performs on the bestseller list and the way its author performs at the polls means that politicians take their book sales—and rankings—personally. Hillary Clinton was purportedly upset when her book was knocked from its position at the top of the Times list by another book written by political enemy of hers, Edward Klein. His book, Blood Feud, which some writers have since tried to discredit, traced the allegedly antagonistic relationship between the Clintons and the Obamas. When it debuted, Klein took the top slot, knocking Clinton to second even after she had spent a grueling summer crisscrossing the nation on a book tour that appeared to be testing the waters for an upcoming presidential bid.
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