As part of his run for the presidency, Ted Cruz published a book titled “A Time for Truth”. But according to a recent FEC filing, Cruz spent $122,250 of his campaign funds to buy up between 8,000 to 10,000 copies of the book.
There are several things that are questionable about this tactic. First of all, it means that Cruz is using money donated to his campaign to buy a book that Cruz gets a cut of. Cruz is lining his own pockets with money from his campaign.
Second, even though the books were purchased by the Cruz campaign, they are still sales. This tactic is a common one used to get books onto best-seller lists, which then helps increase sales. And considering that the total sales of Cruz’s book is 12,000 copies, the vast majority of the copies were purchased by the Cruz campaign.
Third, the Cruz campaign is then having the book “signed”, supposedly by Cruz himself, but almost certainly by some poor campaign volunteer. And then the Cruz campaign is selling the “signed” books for $85 on his campaign website. Which means that the donor money is being used to buy the books, which are then being marked up 300% and sold back to the same stupid donors.
And all this puts money into the personal bank account of Ted Cruz. And that’s the truth.
UPDATE: At a private fund-raiser in Dallas Texas for his brother Jeb Bush, former president George W. Bush unleashed on Ted Cruz, saying “I just don’t like the guy”, calling Cruz “opportunistic” and accusing Cruz of being a politician just for his own personal gain. Bush claimed that Cruz was sucking up to Donald Trump in the expectation that Trump’s support would come to him in the end. Cruz is well known to the former president, having served as a domestic policy adviser on Dubya’s presidential campaign in 2000, and as part of his administration.
5 Comments
Anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, with two active brain cells to rub together could tell exactly what this charlatan was/is.
Ted Cruz: The Wannabe Demagogue without any talent.
It doesn’t surprise me. Cruz has a reputation of pedantry. He doesn’t really care about representing anyone or solving problems. He simply enjoys quibbling over procedural trivialities and loves that he has found a job where he gets paid to do just that. If he were actually elected, I have no doubt that he would probably be the most ineffectual and worthless president in history.
According to the New Republic story quoted in this article, “When authors buy copies directly from their publisher… authors make no royalties from those sales.” The campaign makes money, but not Cruz. Except by artificially inflating the reputation of the book (with NO help from the Times bestseller list because the Times understands what is going on) and hopefully (for the Cruzer) selling more books.
It’s creative, for sure, gaming the system this way!
It actually looks like the books bought by his campaign were not “author copies”, so Cruz would get royalties. But it is hard to tell. Either way it is a crock.
Babe of the Boom — it really is amazing that for someone as smart as Cruz seems to be, he really does have absolutely no clue.
Politician on a book tour pretending to run for President. We haven’t seen one that since…Gingrich and Cain. Nine, nine, niiiine!…shuck a ducky! What next, an ex-Fox Noise evangelical huckster running for prez while humping a book called “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy”? Don’t make me laugh.
And what’s more ironic than a book by Cruz titled “A Time for Truth”?