Dinesh D'Souza's 'America' banished from New York Times best seller list

6/21/2014

BY PAUL BEDARD | JUNE 20, 2014 | 1:01 PM 

The New York Times bestseller list hasn't waited a millisecond to put Hillary Clinton's book atop its influential chart after just a week of sales, but has totally ignored another top-10 hardcover from noted conservative and critic of President Obama, Dinesh D'Souza.

His new book, on sale for three weeks, isn’t just absent from the top 10 lists already set for the next two Sundays, but totally missing from the list of the nation’s top 25 nonfiction hardcovers despite having sales higher than 13 on the latest Times chart.

According to sales reports provided to Secrets, D'Souza's new book America: Imagine a World Without Her, sold 4,915 in the first week and 5,592 in the second week. Had it been included on the upcoming June 22 Times hardcover nonfiction list, it would have ranked No. 8, and then No. 11 on the June 29 list that puts Clinton's sales at 85,721. The lists are widely circulated in the publishing industry before they go public.

The Times is somewhat mysterious in how it calculates its list, but it includes several books selling well under 3,000 copies in a week. A spokeswoman said, “We let the rankings speak for themselves and are confident they are accurate.”

America is expected to explode when the accompanying movie debuts next month. In America, D’Sousa slams Obama’s agenda and targets Clinton too — maybe one reason the Times hasn’t recognized it.

“They are part of the propaganda arm of the Obama administration,” D'Souza told Secrets from Philadelphia, where his book and movie bus tour had stopped before traveling to Washington on Friday. His Obama's America was a Times No. 1 best-seller.

“It’s their newspaper, and they have a right to rig their list anyway they want, but if they are doing it, people should know,” he said.

D'Souza, who last month pleaded guilty to one criminal count of making illegal contributions in the names of others, said the list is important to boosting sales. “It matters to be on it,” he said.

But to ignore his latest best seller, he said, “the Times is falling short of its journalistic and editorial responsibilities in a much a bigger way than keeping me off the list.”

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.

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