Ah.

A few years ago HERE I wondered who the hell was buying the blizzard of conservative books by people like Ann Coulter:

But last night, watching her on Huckabee, I started thinking of the fact that her name, both on tv and in print, is always accompanied by "#1 New York Times bestselling author!!!" Which is funny since she spends most of her waking moments barking that the NYT is the devil. But more to the point...who the fuck is buying these books?...I'm officially calling bullshit on these claims that her books top the NYT list. I dunno what kind of arrangement they have, but it's bullshit. I can live with her prancing around on tv spouting nonsense, but seriously, I think I'm gonna bring a lawn chair and a Coors Lite party ball to Barnes & Noble and set up shop to see who's buying her books. Cause, like chicks who insist on not having bangs and showing us their freaking movie-screen foreheads, it makes no fucking sense at all.

It turns out that thanks to the SHOW ME THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE! book just now released a few weeks after Obama showed everybody his birth certificate somehow still making the NY Times bestseller list, I have my answer:

The book, it's worth noting, received an early boost from Matt Drudge. But there's another catch here: the Times placed a dagger (†) symbol next to the entry for "Where's the Birth Certificate?" on the bestseller list, indicating that "that some retailers report receiving bulk orders."

This is not unusual in the world of conservative publishing. Mitt Romney's campaign biography debuted on top of the NYT bestseller list last year, but it was later reported that Romney was asking institutions hosting his speeches to buy thousands of copies of the book at a sharply discounted price. It's to the advantage of publishers to sell books in bulk, thus landing on the bestseller lists and creating buzz.