The New York Times won't put Ted Cruz's book on the bestseller list, despite huge sales

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published 10 July 2015

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz's new book, A Time For Truth, outsold nearly all of the 20 books on The New York Times' weekly bestseller list. The Texas senator's book ranks fourth on The Wall Street Journal hardcover list and fourth on the Publisher's Weekly hardcover list, Politico points out. And yet, Cruz's book is nowhere to be seen in the Times' ranking.

Conservatives are irate. After all, Cruz's book sold 11,854 copies in its first week, Politico reports. In comparison, Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance — which snagged the number two spot on the Times' list — sold fewer than 10,000 copies. And yet, when The New York Times compiled its latest list, it informed HarperCollins that Cruz's book wasn't going to make the cut.

HarperCollins demanded answers. The Times' response: "We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold. This book didn't meet that standard this week." When asked to specify exactly what those standards were, the Times said that its decisions had to do with "patterns of sales for every book." In this case, The Times says that "the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases."