Author Mark Dawson lost his position in the Top 10 of the Sunday Times bestseller charts after revealing that he had bought 400 copies of his book himself, the Guardian reported on Wednesday 22nd July.
Dawson admitted on his podcast, The Self Publishing Show, that he had ordered 400 hardback copies of his thriller, The Cleaner, at a cost of £3,600. This moved him up from 13th place in the chart, to 8th.
Nielsen BookScan, which compiles the chart, investigated, and decided that the sales did not meet its criteria.
Dawson’s publisher Wellbeck said he bought copies of the book to sell and send to readers in other countries.
Whatever the position of The Cleaner in the bestseller charts, I wonder if the furore might alert more potential readers to its existence and result in extra sales.
The Cleaner seems to have been first published in 2014.
‘A literary sensation’
The daily telegraph
‘Ok read’
daisy on amazon
‘A depressing book and even more depressing to find out that there is a series of books about this character’
western fan on amazon