Re: Bestseller status

In <3omvov$slf@crl3.crl.com> milne@crl.com (Andrew Milne) writes: >Some statistics:
>35 books by L. Ron Hubbard have appeared on bestseller lists, with total
>combined fiction and non-fiction sales of 120 million copies. Dianetics
>alone has sold twice as many copies in the last decade as in the previous
>30 years.
>Expaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaansion!

Yes, and I know how they did it :o)

Last week I made a tour through several second-hand-bookshops, on a quest to find a used copy of "Dianetics". Most shop owners got _really_ pissed when I asked for it, but relaxed somewhat when I explained that I wanted to buy a _used_ one so I would not sponsor the Weirdos. When I asked what caused their hostility, they explained about a bunch of nuts that shows up every now and then and tries to fill the shops with lots of "Dianetics". But after having purchased one lot of these and having them sit in the stacks for years, they didn't make the mistake again. One even refuses to let the "missionairies" into his shop, because if he doesn't buy the books, they would talk endlessly, give everyone in the shop "those weird stares" and hinder business.

So talk about high pressure sales tactics, though not exactly on the real market...

I finally found _one_ copy, and by sheer coincidence, got another one of LRs great works. The german title is "Versklavte Seelen", which translates to "Enslaved souls". The original title is "Slaves of sleep"...

--

Rolf Elak | "Any view of things that is not strange rem@nite. | is false" toppoint.de | (Neil Gaiman, The Sandman)