Cruz book lands on NY Times best-seller list

by Jesse Byrnes - 07/15/15 6:36 PM ET

Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) recently released book has landed on The New York Times best-seller list this week, after its initial omission saw public criticism.

The Republican presidential candidate’s A Time for Truth comes in at No. 7 on the Times’s latest list of best-selling nonfiction books due out Friday, newspaper spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told The Hill.

{mosads}”This week’s NYT best seller list was arrived at using the same process as last week’s — and the week before that,” Murphy wrote in an email. “That process involves a careful analysis of data, and is not influenced in any way by the content of a book, or by pressure from publishers or book sellers.”

“Our approach serves Times readers by authenticating broadly popular books through the confidential reporting of a wide range of retailers. In order to avoid compromising that process, we do not disclose who reports sales to us,” Murphy added.

The book’s inclusion comes after Cruz’s campaign and HarperCollins, which published the book, publicly criticized the newspaper for omitting it from its current list, citing the book’s inclusion on other prominent rankings.

Cruz said public attention had helped propel his book onto the list.

“I’m glad The New York Times listed it. I appreciate their listing it,” Cruz said on Fox News’s “The Kelly File” hours after it was reported his book had made it on the list. He then accused the newspaper of political discrimination.

“[I]t seems to me, there are a lot of conservative authors The New York Times discriminates against,” Cruz said, not mentioning specific names.

Books from conservative pundits such as Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter have appeared on the Times list.

“There is a need for the public editor of The New York Times to investigate their methodology,” Cruz said. “If they want to be credible journalists, the public editor needs to investigate their methodology, see if they’re discriminating against authors that they may have different political views [from],” Cruz said.

Cruz’s campaign blasted the newspaper last week for the book not being initially included on the list, describing the Times‘s explanations for its omission as “cryptic” and “false.”

“In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases,” Murphy said in a statement to Politico last week.

Cruz’s campaign said that was “a blatant falsehood,” noting the book had sold more copies than 18 of the 20 books on the list at that time.

Publishing giant HarperCollins said it found “no evidence of bulk orders or sales through any retailer or organization.” This week, Amazon also denied that bulk purchases were carrying Cruz’s book sales.

—Updated at 9:49 p.m.

Tags Ted Cruz