Steve Forbes falsely inflates his own book Amazon numbers
Gawker is reporting that Steve Forbes had his sales staff buy copies of his book, Power, Ambition, Glory, in order to drive up his Amazon numbers and create the image that it was a bestseller. It partially worked, getting the book into the top 100 on Amazon.
It’s very important to Steve that he be considered a successful author and a serious scholar. So he (or someone that works for him) instructed the Forbes sales staff to buy the book – every day, several times a day, in different stores, especially when they travel, so that it will help inflate the book’s sales figures. They can expense these purchases and the company will presumably write off the cost. Using this technique, they successfully got the book into the top 100 on Amazon during the first week of release, but it’s flatlined since then.
Note to aspiring bestselling authors: an army of compliant lackeys with expense accounts always helps.