Some true stories are better than fiction:
http://www.jmarkpowell.com/the-bests...f-the-century/
And it turns out the NYT Bestseller list has always been more fiction than fact.
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This is the story of how a talk radio pioneer (and his devoted fans) concocted a wildly preposterous hoax – and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
To fully appreciate this tale, you must first understand Jean Shepherd, the satirical genius who was a masterful storyteller, helped create the talk radio format, and was a gifted writer who gave the world A Christmas Story, which eventually became a movie in 1983 (narrated by Shepherd himself) and grew into an annual holiday tradition.
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Shep may have been working in Manhattan, but having been born and raised in Hammond, Indiana (where A Christmas Story is set, by the way) he still had Midwestern sensibilities. One thing that astonished him about New Yorkers was (and still remains) their slavish obsession with Top 10 lists. “The 10 Most Beautiful People…” “The 10 New Looks for Summer…” “The 10 Hottest Movies…” Shep felt New Yorkers blindly followed whatever appeared on those lists without thinking or questioning them. The one that got his goat most of all was The New York Times Best Seller list for books.
The Times has been printing this highly influential list since 1931. But here’s the thing: in Shep’s time, despite its name, the criteria for making the list involved more than just book sales. It included customer requests for and questions about books to book sellers. So if a retailer had a stack of a particular book that wasn’t selling, he could gin up enough queries about it to get the title included on the best seller list, which then made people go out and buy it.
Shep saw through this hypocrisy and ranted about it at length one night. In a burst of inspiration, he speculated that if enough people requested the same title of a book that didn’t actually exist, it could indeed make the coveted New York Times Best Seller List.The Night People went crazy over the idea; WOR was flooded with calls from listeners pledging their support.
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And sure enough, it happened: by early summer 1956, the book that didn’t exist made The New York Times Best Seller List … and kept inching upward on it. One literary gossip columnist even wrote in a leading newspaper, “Had a delightful lunch the other day with Frederick R. Ewing and his charming wife, Marjorie.”
And the whole time this was going on, Shep and his Night People listeners were laughing themselves silly. There was never any secret to it; it was a hoax openly discussed and pulled off right on the public airwaves. One day that summer, Shep was having lunch with his friend, real-life science fiction novelist Theodore Sturgeon, and the publisher of Ballantine Books. Sturgeon casually asked, “Would you like to meet the author of I, Libertine?” The publisher excitedly looked around the room. “Would I? Every publishing house in New York would like to buy that title. Where is he?” Sturgeon pointed to Shep and said, “Right here.” They explained the gag and had a good laugh, then decided to actually produce a real book. So working from the plot outline Shep had given his listeners, Sturgeon cranked out a real story. It hit store shelves in September 1956, and guess what? You got it – I, Libertine made the Times Best Seller list (again).
The cover artwork has a hilariously lurid painting featuring the ridiculous teaser line: “Gadzooks,’ quoth I, ‘but here’s a saucy bawd!'” A hint about the story’s true origin is hidden within it: an inn sign in the background features a shepherd’s staff. There’s even a black and white photo on the back cover of a forlorn looking Shep identified as Ewing. (In a totally classy move, Shep donated all profits from the real book to charity. His intention had never been to con people out of money; it was to expose human gullibility and to demonstrate how easily people can be manipulated by their blind desire to be part of the “in” crowd.)
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Much more at the source
A very amusing story worthy of its own movie.