美国国家公共电台 NPR Donald Trump, Jr. Would Likely Have Made The Bestseller List Without The RNC Buy

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

When Donald Trump¹ Jr.'s new book first topped the New York Times bestseller list, it raised eyebrows² and not just because of who the author is. Beside the title of the book, which is "Triggered: How The Left Thrives On Hate And Wants To Silence Us," was a dagger³. That symbol meant a portion of the book sales were made in bulk, which led some to question whether Trump deserved the top billing. The answer, as NPR's Rose Friedman explains, is complicated.

ROSE FRIEDMAN, BYLINE⁴: For anyone involved in writing or publishing books, the New York Times bestseller list is the holy grail.

DOMINIQUE RACCAH: I still remember the very first time that I got on the list. For an indie press in the middle of the Midwest, yeah, it was absolutely the most extraordinary moment of my life.

FRIEDMAN: Dominique Raccah is the publisher of Sourcebooks near Chicago. Nobody quite knows what goes into making a New York Times bestseller. The paper doesn't reveal its methodology, other than to say, in part, that it's based on a, quote, "detailed⁵ analysis of book sales from a wide range of retailers⁶." So I asked the people who are in the best position to make educated guesses about a book's sales - publishers, who watch the list closely.

RACCAH: You expect that if it's rung up at a cash register, it's reported to the New York Times, and it's reported to the publisher. All of those things align⁷ equivalently. That is not the experience we have.

FRIEDMAN: That's because nowhere in the world is there a straight-up list of how many copies every book has sold. It just doesn't exist. Sure, publishers get numbers from Nielsen BookScan, which pays retailers to report their sales. And yes, publishers ship books to Amazon, Target and Barnes & Noble and get sales figures back. But some books go through middlemen - distributors who sell to many independent bookstores, and not all of them report their sales.

Dennis Johnson, co-founder of Melville House, says he only really knows for sure what he sends out.

DENNIS JOHNSON: I can look at each account in the country that has taken a book directly from our warehouse⁸. And so I know how many books are out there. But that is not a sales reporting service, really. It's an ordering service.

FRIEDMAN: And then there are books that get sold to third parties. For example...

JOHNSON: If you do a book on health care and there is some kind of health care organization or hospital that wants to buy that book for its employees, that has a healthy business efficiency to it.

FRIEDMAN: Because the publisher is selling directly to the hospital - this happens all the time. An organization thinks a book would be good for its employees to read, so it makes a bulk order. Since the sale didn't go through a store, it wouldn't get reported to bestseller lists.

But here's where we need to make a distinction. If someone had instead bought the books from a bulk-buying arm of a big bookstore, that would get reported. And if the book does make the bestseller list, that bulk order would be noted⁹ as part of its sales, which brings us to...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump Jr.

(APPLAUSE)

FRIEDMAN: Donald Trump Jr.'s book "Triggered" was the subject of at least one bulk sale in its first week. According to a Federal Election Commission filing, the Republican National Committee paid Books-A-Million $94,800. That was likely around 4,000 copies. There have been reports of other bulk purchases by conservative organizations. That's why "Triggered" has that little dagger symbol on the New York Times bestseller list. But every publisher I talked to told me the same thing Dennis Johnson did.

JOHNSON: It looks like he might have made that list anyway.

FRIEDMAN: The RNC's one purchase was probably not what got the book onto the list initially¹⁰. It was the rest of the copies - 71,000 in that first week, according to Nielsen BookScan.

RYAN SCHLEICHER: Given that every conservative organization was promoting it in their newsletters, on TV and tweets, that generates PR, and PR generates sales. And that's how it goes.

FRIEDMAN: Ryan Schleicher is special sales director at Porchlight Books, a bulk sales company which mostly supplies books to conferences or institutions. He says even if an author tried to make the bestseller list through bulk orders, it wouldn't work.

SCHLEICHER: Every author that has a platform of any kind wants to make a bestseller list. And they - a lot of authors will ask, how do we get these considered as individual? And we tell them, you don't because they're bulk.

FRIEDMAN: There is a way to game the system, says Dennis Johnson. But it's not with those big bulk orders.

JOHNSON: Probably the safest way to do that is to employ services that will calculate how many books you need to sell in given markets to get you onto the bestseller list. So they will call the leading bookstore in Atlanta that they know is a store that reports to The New York Times, and they will say, we want to buy 36 copies. And then they'll call the store in Miami. They will say, we want to buy 21 copies. And those will not appear to be bulk sales.

FRIEDMAN: This practice makes publishers like Dominique Raccah uncomfortable.

RACCAH: You care about the bestsellers list because you believe it to be an indication of what Americans are reading. The problem with this particular kind of system is that it's actually inflating¹¹ numbers in such a way as to not be representative of what Americans are actually reading.

FRIEDMAN: Of course, once a book is sold, it's anyone's guess as to whether Americans are actually reading it or just letting it collect dust on the shelf.

Rose Friedman, NPR News, New York.

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 eyebrows   

眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Eyebrows stop sweat from coming down into the eyes. 眉毛挡住汗水使其不能流进眼睛。
• His eyebrows project noticeably. 他的眉毛特别突出。

3 dagger   

n.匕首，短剑，剑号

参考例句：

• The bad news is a dagger to his heart.这条坏消息刺痛了他的心。
• The murderer thrust a dagger into her heart.凶手将匕首刺进她的心脏。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

6 retailers   

零售商，零售店( retailer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• High street retailers reported a marked increase in sales before Christmas. 商业街的零售商报告说圣诞节前销售量显著提高。
• Retailers have a statutory duty to provide goods suitable for their purpose. 零售商有为他们提供符合要求的货品的法定义务。

7 align   

vt.使成一线，结盟，调节；vi.成一线，结盟

参考例句：

• Align the ruler and the middle of the paper.使尺子与纸张的中部成一条直线。
• There are signs that the prime minister is aligning himself with the liberals.有迹象表明首相正在与自由党人结盟。

8 warehouse   

n.仓库；vt.存入仓库

参考例句：

• We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
• The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。

9 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

10 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

11 inflating   

v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的现在分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨

参考例句：

• I felt myself inflating slowly with rage, like a tyre. 我感到自己体内的怒气正慢慢膨胀，像一只轮胎那样。 来自互联网
• Many are already overheating, with prices rising and asset bubbles inflating. 随着物价日益上涨、资产泡沫膨胀，很多新兴国家经济已经过热。 来自互联网