Mike Pence’s book “Hangin’ in There: How I Pretended Nearly Getting Lynched By People Who Voted For Me Wasn’t That Big Of A Deal And So Can You,” roped its way to debuting at the #2 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List the usual way books by Republican politicians do these days: By having an outside entity buy up pallets of copies to artificially inflate the sales numbers, and send those copies to other donors as a “free gift,” Forbes reports, citing FEC filings.
In this case, Pence’s “Great America PAC” shelled out $91,000 to a company called “Books on Call NYC” and listed it as “collateral materials” on an FEC filing, per Forbes, whose report says that Pence somehow managed to avoid a “bulk purchase” asterisk on the Times bestseller list too. The best part for him is that since he’s not currently a candidate, there’s no prohibition on receiving royalties for the book sales, likely netting the Vice Former Guy at least $15,000.
Non-Correction: The current version of this article misidentified Mike Pence’s memoir “So Help Me God” as “Hangin’ in There: How I Pretended Nearly Getting Lynched By People Who Voted For Me Wasn’t That Big Of A Deal And So Can You.” National Zero does not regret the error.