Ann Coulter's Book is #1 - How Can That Be?

I wouldn't pay 50 cents to get that book. But sure enough it is #1 on the NYT book list.

Remember that the beauty of America is that anybody can publish anything.

Even if you are a lunatic like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore. Both represent the degradation of political discourse in the country.

:hi:

Like disrupting a political discussion on a political message board, for example.

Coulter is far-right, Moore is a moderate at best.

Uh-uh. Moore is pretty far left. I'm not as far left as he is. I don't agree with that "Bushitler" stuff.

As for comparing Moore to Coulter, they're both loudmouthed pundits who say extreme things that piss off the other side. In that way, they're cut from the same cloth.
Ringo

also, he's not a loudmouth pundit. Coulter on the other hand continually makes statements that are intentionally inflammatory.

The reason the right gets pissed off by Moore is because they are a bunch of spoiled brats that think they are supposed to get whatever they want, and they expect the world to suck up to them.

Coulter is a hypocritcal, hateful, right-wing harpy with an ugly soul.

No comparison.

Where has Moore ever said anything remotely resembling this?

Um... Mike is all fact, as anyone who KNOWS FACTS would know :eyes:

I'm surprised though, that having found your way here, that you can't see any qualitative differences between Ann Coulter and Michael Moore.

--IMM

...it's who is reading it, is the point. To be number one at NYT, a LOT of people have to be reading it.

a lot of corporations have to be BUYING it. The best-seller list has zero to do with reading

how many right wing websites and orgs are giving this book away free with a subscription/donation/etc?

But the NYT bestseller list is an EXTRAPOLATION. They take the sales data from a couple of stores here and there, and sample it, and PROJECT total sales based on that sampling. Kinda like exit polls....

If you happen to KNOW what stores they'll be looking at, and you send a bunch of stooges to go in there and buy one or two copies an hour, at different registers, you can totally game the numbers.

Key word: Seller.

Bulk buys count towards total.

Nice try.

reader. there is no way of quantifying who is actually reading her bs--or anything else that is on the lists.

For example, she could be buying up a lot of her own copies. The republican party leadership could be buying up a lot of copies and giving them away to campaign donors. Or twisted, rich repubs , such as Richard Mellon Scaife could be buying huge amounts of copies of Coulter's book and giving them away.

These are not altogether uncommon tactics. So, just because the sales reflect that she is number one on the best seller list does not mean that a great many people are reading her vile trash.

that no matter how tempting it is to buy her "book" and to use it for lav paper, bird cage liner, or puppy toilet-training, don't do it because it will make her sales look better.

Learn a little about publishing and bestseller lists before you jump to wrong conclusions.

Clearly someone's buying and reselling at a loss... now who would that be??

Are you Ann Coulter's publicist?

How did you find your way onto DU?

Ann Coulter, however, is a sick, vicious, meanspirited thing that is openly racist and hurtful. Don't even begin to compare the two.

show me anywhere that Michael Moore has made the types of statements that Coulter has spewed across our country.

As far as her book being # 1 well that's determined by sales, any group can buy large numbers of books. So imho you can give Coulter the lunatic handel but not Moore, they don't even belong in the same breath.

and even if you're a lunatic like frontdeboeuf you're free to post on any message board you like.

Do I smell melting cheese?

against injustice and government/corporate stupidity. The rw has a blind hatred against Moore, and rightly so, if they didn't he wouldn't be doing his job.

Because you can't handle the truth?

All the folks who speak out against the chimp and his fascist cronies are called lunatics.

Go crawl back under the rock, please.

is just a froth mouthed bigot.

freak like Coulter. You, I mean, republicans, just can't stand his truth telling. Too painful for y'all, I mean them. He does not lie or advocate violence like the freak.

Yeah, because telling the little guy to question their government, corporations and the NRA . . . EXTREME PINKO COMMIE!!!

Stupid.

All of these questions have the same answer:

1. Does a bear poop in the woods?
2. What is the sound of one hand clapping?
3. If a tree falls in the woods, and no one can hear it, does it make a sound?

Answer: FREEDOM!
:patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

Equating Michael Moore with Ann Coulter is not something usually done around here.

I have to give you credit for your boldness.

However, the act of equating the two has absolutely no basis in reality. Moore may stretch the truth at times, but his whole act isn't centered on deception and slander.

Scaife has a warehouse full of Coulter books somewhere.

...and give away or resell them at a fraction of the cover price to raise her numbers.

This is part of the true "vast right-wing conspiracy".

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/books/bestseller/0716besthardnonfiction.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

You may need a subscription for the stupid NYT web. Sorry. Take my word for it, no dagger.

Here is an interesting link on this from the village voice:
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/powerplays/archives/002677.php

Note that in the correction here: http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/powerplays/archives/002686.php
Nielsen BookScan claims it eliminates bulk sales from its calculations.

I think the correct conclusion may very well be the unpleasant one.

I may have seen the PW bestseller list this morning -- I thought it was the NYT a colleague showed me... but it was indeed marked by a dagger.

that supports your assertion. The NYT list has no dagger and I looked at PW and they don't seem to break out bulk sales. The Voice article I linked indicated that there are indeed tons of bulk sales but the the neilson list eliminates them and still has godless on their bs list. Now I am more than willing that they have figured out a way to scam the bulk sales filters, but other than empty assertions I have no proof.

good or bad and her book gets tons of publicity.

Any major book, either from a wacko like Coulter or one of us, can sell a lot. It's still really sad, though.

Sad but true - stupid people ARE allowed to breed, unfortunately.

And besides, who cares? Majoritarianism is not the measurement by which the correctness of someone's ideas should be judged.

It doesn't help that we all feed the trolls by giving her more attention every time she spouts off too.

She's such a loose cannon, people are curious about the latest venom she's spewed. Sad but true. Like slowing down to see a bad car accident.

I admit, if I saw her book at a garage sale (Ann Coulter appearing at garage sales soon), I would buy it for a quarter. Just to be shocked at her horrible-ness.

I'm not a fan of book burning in general, but I'll make an exception for Coulter's fictions.

books rot in a warehouse, they don't care about the book. All they care is that she gets the publicity by the corporate media who mainstreams her as a popular author.

Will the left do the same when the veterans who were smeared along with Kerry in 2004 put their book out that counters all the attacks they endured along with him? Will the corporate media give the truth and the documented records half the attention they gave the lies?

We'll see.

Bulk buying pushes the numbers up. It's not that a huge number of people are going to the book store and walking out with a single copy because that's not what's happening.

Interested parties buy large quantities of the book and re-sell. Even at a discount they make the investment back and boost the ratings to "best seller" for publicity.

This is what cost Jim Wright his speakership when Newt Gingritch pointed out that Jim's supporters were giving him de-facto donations by buying hundreds of copies and giving them as gifts. It wasn't long before Newt was hoisted on the same pitard.

Poorly written fiction sleaze sells in America!

Big difference. Like having the World Series fixed -- you didn't really win, and everyone who counts knows it...

signifying that inordinate amounts had been bought in bulk buys. I haven't seen the recent NYT list, but I imagine it's more of the same.

I mean, there is a population of nutjobs out there that read her crap - just go to Free Republic for an example.

She's be criticized before as a writer of books bulked by the publisher to put it on the list and her last 2 books before Godless both were hit with the asterick. But this book isn't.


Banks have flags to help detect if someone is dealing with drug or other illegally gained money. If you have a transaction of more than $10,000, that transaction is flagged as a potential problem. More than likely if it happens a few times in life it'll mean nothing but if I was dealing drugs and depositing large chunks of change in the bank - too many large deposits will get flagged by the IRS. I use to sell cars and you knew who the drug dealers were - they'd come in and want to spend $9,000-$9,500 down payment on the car because anything more than that would flag them.

So I'm guessing that the Publishers know that the NYTimes is aware of the bulk-buying designation on the list and have simply reduced the numbers or spread the wealth out in purchases in order to make it less noticable. Like the money flag, you can probably get away with a few small transactions so they do their best to keep it under the radar

...so this time they've found a new way to game the system.

I notice some RW publications are offering the book
at STEEP discounts as part of a subscription (I've seen it for $4.99)
and I'm guessing those are counted as actual sales, even though
they are practically GIVING it away.

Does anyone here know:
What qualifies as "bulk sales", anyway?
What is the specific definition being used?

by the right wing to get the desired effect. Once again 'they' are successful.

They should be out next week. I hope she goes down in flames.
Check this out: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13803982/

Look to see how many end up on the discount rack in a month or two.

buys her books in massive bulk, thus bumping her up the list. Those books are subsequently given away at large fiundamentalist churches and gun shows. This has been going on for years, and is how complete fruitcakes like her get high-profile interviews on the major talk shows.

Scaife & Co. are just getting better at the game and avoiding the large purchase orders

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/books/bestseller/0716besthardadvice.html

and where do you see the daggers or asterisks?

Personally I wish we would just stop paying attention to her.

Sick as it is, many Americans love to hate people. They need scapegoats to blame for their problems.

tons of copies.

:shrug:

scariest of all, the fanatic percentage of Americans who would actually pay full cover price to read her bullshit

Doesn't mean we all want to be "goose-stepping" down the street though.

The Bible has also sold tons of copies, but there aren't many people following it's teaching.

So what? Ann writes a disgusting, poorly researched, factually inaccurate, steaming pile of dog shit, and there are enough Novocaine Brained idiots willing to pay for it.

Just proves what Barnum said was true; "there's a sucker born every minute".

Ann Coulter is nothing but a pimple on the ass of the world. If she couldn/t fool mouth breathing wing-nuts into plopping down their hard earned money on her little diatribes, she'd be selling $5 hand-jobs on the street.

as usual.

I mean, it's not democrats buying that book in bulk, and it requires some capital to buy enough of 'm to make it to nr 1. I'm sure rich republicans factor in there somewhere.

Or some people buying it to see what it's all about just because of the controversy.

Not everyone who buys it and reads it will agree with it all. There's the gawking at the freak effect here. Some are just buying it for their amusement, no doubt.

Just "some people" each buying one book won't get you to nr 1.

I even checked the NYT best seller list to see if her sales were artificially inflated (they probably were, I cant see anyone with an IQ over 10 reading that book) or not but there's no way to check.