What happened to Hillary's books?

...here is a FASCINATING observation I have made. I have thus far seen NOT ONE of the Hillary books at either flea markets or thrift stores. Have you? Think about it. This book supposedly has MILLIONS of copies floating around out there and yet somehow they just don't make their way thru the normal book recycling system like other books. So what happened to all the Hillary books?

...Could the vast majority of the Hillary books (except for the autographed copies sold for profit on eBay) end up in warehouses? That is my suspicion and most likely they are still SITTING there. And who bought those books only to warehouse them? Labor unions? Other organizations? Using Freakonomics observations makes me suspicious that Hillary has received campaign contributions via PHONY book sales.

Someone might want to look into this. But most won't.

Shades of Jim Wright! (former Speaker of the House).

My plans for an X-Prize Cup entry:

I'm going to circulate a press release stating that a new government agency will regulate the private launch and space tourism industries. The press release will state that Hillary Clinton has been chosen to lead this agency.

But first, we stuff Rand Simberg's pockets with PongSats to ride along when he goes ballistic.

But first, we stuff Rand Simberg's pockets with PongSats to ride along when he goes ballistic.

First, I'd have to take it seriously.

I saw one at my friend's mother's place.
Maybe they were sold in Europe.

Sounds like BS to me.

One freeper hasn't noticed copies of books in thrift stores and flea-markets, so we have a national conspiracy to... funnel money via book sales?

Psht.

(Plus, unless Hillary owns the publisher or has an amazingly sweet deal, the publisher would be the one making a mint off this, and her "contributions" would be very low indeed.)

One freeper hasn't noticed copies of books in thrift stores and flea-markets, so we have a national conspiracy to... funnel money via book sales?

No. We have something worth digging into a little more.

...unless Hillary owns the publisher or has an amazingly sweet deal...

Given the unprecedented nature of the size of the advance and initial printing, there was much justifiable speculation at the time that that was exactly the case (amazingly sweet deal, that is).

non-fiction stays in shelves more then fiction does.
You read a mystery novel you dump it.
You read non-fiction, it sticks around as reference material
unless it's just awful.

There seems to be a lot of Clinton on Ebay for what that's worth.

"Sounds like BS to me."

Yep. Amazon lists 383 copies "used and new" available from Amazon sellers.

So there are LOTS of them available in the secondary market (i.e. used).

Less than four hundred of a print run of hundreds of thousands hardly constitutes "lots."

"Less than four hundred of a print run of hundreds of thousands hardly constitutes "lots.""

Actually, it is for Amazon. Often used booksellers will list only one copy of a particular title when they have a bunch. I just looked up The Da Vinci Code, which is a phenomenal bestseller, and it lists 528 for sale, out of many millions sold and on the NY Times Bestseller List for 158 weeks.

Consider this myth busted.

Consider this myth busted.

Sorry, I don't think so. You haven't demonstrated any statistically valid correlation between number of books printed, number of books sold, and number of books for sale at Amazon, for various types of books (fiction and non-fiction, unless as some do, you consider Hillary's book fiction). Data is not the plural of anecdote.

"ou haven't demonstrated any statistically valid correlation between number of books printed, number of books sold, and number of books for sale..."

Er, neither did Freerepublic.com. Their "statistic" was that they hadn't seen any used copies in flea markets. Clearly there are used copies available on eBay and Amazon.com. So their observation is directly refuted with a simple web-search.

That only refutes the "urban myth" that there are no used books available. It doesn't address the issue of whether or not there was something fishy about the book deal.

Anonymous: "non-fiction stays in shelves more then fiction does"

Probably true - but what does that have to do with Clinton's book?

I can't remember who it was, but just weeks before Hillary's book came out there was a real covered scandal along these lines. Supposedly some guy, who's more right sided bought 20K of his own books from the first publish, and returned 18K to the publisher, because of a "typo" or some such. It didn't matter, because it registered as a 20K sale, which was enough to put him on the NYT best seller list. Supposedly the purpose for the advance purchase, which of which 90% was returned was to have a personal stockpile for a direct sale and sign campaign either for his booktour, or for an n3tbased(why is 0nline and n3tbased blocked words? they seem they should be common words in this particular media), direct sale endeavour.

That guy got ran through the ringer for a mistake he himself pointed out first, but was eviscerated because of his high standing on the non fiction best seller list days later, even though he said the first weeks would be innaccurate. I wish I remembered who it was (I hate non-fiction "memoirs" give me a good, isolated from recent history history, and I'll read it) but it just seems fair that Hillary go through the same sort of independant investigation the media was willing to do on "that guy."

However, didn't Hillary also have something like 4 subsequent cycles of publishing? That is almost enough reason to think that this is probably a bit of an exaggeration.

I can't remember who it was, but just weeks before Hillary's book came out there was a real covered scandal along these lines.

Several years before all this, the Scientologists were accused of buying large quantities of L. Ron Hubbard's novels Battlefield Earth and the Mission Earth series; they supposedly would return the books the next day for credit at the bookstores where they were purchased. Sales count in the Best Sellers listings, but returns don't subtract ... so their boy Elron made it into the Top Ten several times. Don't know whether it's true, but it's plausible.

"That only refutes the "urban myth" that there are no used books available. It doesn't address the issue of whether or not there was something fishy about the book deal."

Evidence?

Freerepublic.com made an observation that he had observed no used books on sale at "obvious" places like flea markets. And this is the basis for the allegation that there is something fishy about the book deal.

But it's clear that there ARE substantial numbers of books on sale at used book outlets like eBay and Amazon's Marketplace (two places that are far more geographically dispersed than the flea market in the writer's vicinity). As I pointed out, the number available is in the hundreds, and the number available for the phenomenal bestseller The da Vinci Code is also in the hundreds.

So what's the basis of the belief that something fishy is going on? Faith, apparently, because there is no evidence. That, and an abiding belief that because it's Hillary Clinton, there must be something untoward happening. Hey, I think she's evil too, but I have evidence to support that belief.

"I can't remember who it was, but just weeks before Hillary's book came out there was a real covered scandal along these lines. Supposedly some guy, who's more right sided bought 20K of his own books from the first publish, and returned 18K to the publisher, because of a "typo" or some such."

The Washington Post
March 7, 2002 Thursday
A Case of Strange Book-Keeping;
Author Vise Bought Thousands Of Copies of His Own Work
by Linton Weeks

"Like so many authors, David A. Vise, an award-winning reporter for The Washington Post, wanted to create big buzz for his recently published book. He promoted his work on just about every radio or television show that would have him, including "Today," Don Imus's show and "The O'Reilly Factor." He made personal appearances around the country. He created a Web site advertising the book and its author.

But unlike other authors, Vise also bought between 16,000 and 18,000 copies of his own book from an on-line bookseller, Barnesandnoble.com, and then returned most of them in a confusing series of transactions. This unusual tactic has prompted suspicions that he was trying to manipulate bestseller lists by creating phantom sales, which Vise firmly denies.

Vise's massive book purchases, first revealed last Friday by Publishers Weekly, are now the talk of publishing and journalistic circles in Washington and New York. The one thing clear is that Vise's book "The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen" is already a big bestseller, and probably would have been one even if he hadn't bought a single book."

So what's the basis of the belief that something fishy is going on? Faith, apparently, because there is no evidence.

First, I didn't say that there is something fishy going on. I said there might be, and that it was worth looking into. But you apparently missed this:

I was curious if Hillary's book was popular in conservative areas of the country so I checked the Amazon Geographic book sales areas in places like Jackson, MS, etc.. Well, Hillary's book didn't even make the top ten list in such places so I began checking more liberal locations. Still NO Hillary books in the top 10. Finally I checked out ultra liberal locales like Berkely, CA and Manhattan. Amazingly in none of these places did Hillary's book show up on the top ten list. Some of you may remember that I posted these findings at the time here on the FR.

I did note one oddity however. Despite the fact that the Hillary book did not appear in almost any of the locales that I checked, it did score huge sales in some small town that I never heard of in Virginia.

Perhaps not compelling evidence to you, but it's not no evidence.

"Perhaps not compelling evidence to you, but it's not no evidence."

Huh? It's not _positive_ evidence of anything. It's the same way that conspiracy theorists work--rather than prove that there is a conspiracy, they point to some missing piece of the accepted explanation and claim that this is "proof" that there is another explanation (the CIA killed JFK because the Single Bullet Theory is flawed). It's the same way that Intelligent Design theorists work--"evolution is flawed because there are big holes in the geological record."

If Freerepublic wants to build a case for this theory, then they need positive evidence, such as photos of thousands of the books being pulped, or comments from a person with direct knowledge that this is the case. Not supposed "missing sales" in liberal areas.

But the Freerepublic poster's logic is really suspect when he writes about flea markets and used book stores in his locality and doesn't mention the vast on-line used bookseller market, where there are clearly LOTS of copies available. What PJ-Comix should do is go back to his used book stores and ask them how they have been affected by web-based used booksellers. As any used book store owner will tell him, they have been devastated by the web. The web _IS_ the new used book store. So, if you want to find out if there are used books of a particular title available, the first place you should look is the web (like Amazon's Marketplace), and it is clear that there are a lot of Hillary's books for sale, used.

As a sidenote, anybody who buys an "autographed" copy of a book from eBay is probably getting a forgery. Those are merely used books that somebody forged a signature in.