WINGNUTS & BOOK SALES

We've know for years that conservatives pump up book sales by bulk purchases and it seems this tactic goes back at least to Robert Welch & The John Birch Society:

Moreover, in spite of his earlier expressions of reluctance
to publish the book, his effort to dissociate it from the Society,
and his statement that he wanted to withdraw it from circulation,
Welch declares in this Bulletin that The Politician
has been victimized by a "conspiracy of silence." He suggests
that members, to break this "conspiracy," buy from six to
eighteen copies each—those who can afford to do so—and
give them to their local drug stores, to be displayed and sold;
and that they pay for advertisements of the book in their
local papers, and write letters about it to friends and editors.

SOURCE:THE STRANGE TACTICS OF EXTREMISM (1964), pp.38-39