Today Gatecrasher reported on yet another party for socialite Holly Peterson's "book" The Manny, the racist-'viral'-marketing marred debut whose lack of even trashy-fun value we noted a while back. It's, like, the tenth party we've heard of for this book, which came out in June, so far, and we were all ready to make a joke along the lines of "10 parties, that's one for every book that someone actually went into a store and purchased!" So we looked up Nielsen Bookscan numbers in an attempt to confirm our hunch. Bookscan tracks about 70% of retail sales, but doesn't track bulk buys ("special sales.") We rubbed our hands together gleefully, waiting for the dismal digits to appear on our screen.

Except ... Bookscan has The Manny at 25,195.

Well ... maybe Holly's billionaire dad bought a few copies?

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case. One easy way to tell whether a bulk buy is responsible for a book's sales is the New York Times Bestseller List. In fact, this is one of the few things of which that list is a reliable gauge! If a book has solid, Manny-level sales a month and a half after pub and hasn't even cracked the extended list, it's safe to say that its success isn't based on purchases by individual consumers.

But The Manny cracked the extended list the week of July 15, coming in at #29. So, people really just are that stupid.