On Friday's Tucker Carlson Tonight, radio host and author Dennis Prager explained that the "best seller list" in The New York Times isn't real, because it excludes conservative and religious books it doesn't like, despite the obvious facts that other book-sales lists in the industry include them. Prager cited his new best-seller The Rational Bible: Exodus.
DENNIS PRAGER: It's about The New York Times best-seller list. It's not a best-seller list. I don't say this with any anger. I say it, though, with certitude. It doesn't tell what the best-selling books are. And they admitted it in the 1980s when they were sued by the author of The Exorcist.
And they said it's essentially editorial content rather than just a list of best-selling books. And, generally, people have known that religious books and conservative books don't do as well, even when they are selling well.
In my particular case, with The Rational Bible, it was number two last week on The Wall Street Journal, number two in Publishers Weekly, number one on Ingram. Ingram is the biggest wholesaler to book stores in the country. And number two on BookScan, which is - provides - monitors 75 to 85 percent of the books sold. So that it doesn't even appear on The New York Times best-seller list is a real puzzle.
Subsitute host Brian Kilmeade noted a few conservative authors were listed on the Times Hardcover Nonfiction list for April 22, Secret Empires by Peter Schweizer at 11, and Jerome Corsi's Killing the Deep State at 12. You could also count Unified by Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Trey Gowdy, even if that's not entirely political.
BRIAN KILMEADE: When you have those numbers, I know a little bit about the book business, and if you are on Publishers Weekly and you're ranking high on BookScan, you're usually in that list. And I just find it hard to believe that you can't get BookScan and others to give you numbers to go up The New York Times and say, "Hey, tell me who sold more."
PRAGER: Oh, we have the numbers. It is not a puzzle at all. And it still doesn't matter. They tell you that they are like Coca-Cola. They have a secret formula and they don't want the world to know how they derive their numbers.
And they don't include Amazon. And my book opened as the second best- selling book of all books of all varieties when it opened up on April 2nd. And even then, it didn't appear on The New York Times best-seller list. How is that possible?
And I am only using it - I'm not a victim. I'm not whining. I just want people to know what I have known and many conservatives and many especially religious writers know, it's not a best-seller list. People should understand that and then we can move on.
In his syndicated column, Prager reported the Times couldn't refute the facts of their exclusion of books they didn't like, so they attacked him for using the term "New York Times best-seller" on his own website. He told Kilmeade, "I used that term, I am a New York Times best-selling author. Of course, I'll use it. It helps sell books. It doesn't make me a hypocrite. On the contrary, it makes me honest."
The dishonesty comes from the Times, which tweeted against the evidence "Political views held and expressed by authors have no bearing on our rankings."
