A Case of Strange Book-Keeping
Author Vise Bought Thousands Of Copies of His Own Work

By Linton Weeks

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 7, 2002; Page C01

Like so many authors, David A. Vise, an award-winning reporter for The Washington Post, wanted to create big buzz for his recently published book. He promoted his work on just about every radio or television show that would have him, including "Today," Don Imus's show and "The O'Reilly Factor." He made personal appearances around the country. He created a Web site advertising the book and its author.

But unlike other authors, Vise also bought between 16,000 and 18,000 copies of his own book from an online bookseller, Barnesandnoble.com, and then returned most of them in a confusing series of transactions. This unusual tactic has prompted suspicions that he was trying to manipulate bestseller lists by creating phantom sales, which Vise firmly denies.

Vise's massive book purchases, first revealed last Friday by Publishers Weekly, are now the talk of publishing and journalistic circles in Washington and New York. The one thing clear is that Vise's book "The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen" is already a big bestseller, and probably would have been one even if he hadn't bought a single book.

"David has been a dynamic promoter," says Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic, Vise's publisher, "but he's gotten a little overenthusiastic.

The book was having great success, but not at the level he was perceiving." For example, at one signing, Vise requested 1,000 books and Entrekin told him he needed only 150.

Otherwise, much is murky.

Vise says he had the idea to sell autographed copies of "The Bureau" through his Web site and online when he realized that "most people in America can't purchase books signed by the author."

Like so many authors, Vise also created www.davidvise.com, a site that advertises the book and its writer in several ways. Visitors to the site can read an excerpt. Or peruse positive blurbs. Or suggest actors to play the characters in a movie version.

"My goal," says Vise, "was to provide signed books at the least possible cost."

There is no indication on the Web site, however, that signed copies are available. Visitors to the site are redirected to Barnes & Noble's online store or to Amazon.com or to their nearest independent bookstore or to the book's publisher, Grove/Atlantic.

If you wanted to buy a book from Vise's garage yesterday, you first had to go to Amazon.com, then click the "new," "used" or "collectible" buttons -- which ordinarily connect you with someone besides the author who is trying to sell a copy of the book. That changed between Tuesday and yesterday, when Vise removed one of his links offering Amazon customers his book at $14.50, compared with Amazon's $15. And the only signed copies available appeared to cost $25.01 apiece.

Just how many books he did he buy? Not all of the American Express bills have cleared yet, but Vise estimates that in January and February he bought between 16,000 and 18,000 copies. Taking advantage of Barnesandnoble.com's 30-day return policy, he has returned many thousands of those books.

He says he wanted only 4,000 or so in his garage for online sales, book signings and other publicity.

But somewhere in the to and fro of shipments, Barnesandnoble.com became suspicious and called Vise's publisher to ask what was going on.

Others have become suspicious, too, believing that Vise may have been trying to shot-put his book onto bestseller lists.

"It seems very strange to me," says Geoffrey Shandler, executive editor of the publishing house Little, Brown. "It's an enormous quantity of books for any author to order."

Shandler is the editor of "The Spy Next Door," another recent book about Hanssen.

He adds: "We've been reading his explanations and trying to parse them. We're all confused."

Shandler told Publishers Weekly that no one can be sure whether Vise's purchases affected the bestseller lists of the New York Times and other organizations, "but they sure didn't hurt and they sure look fishy."

"His explanation makes no sense to me," Shandler told Publishers Weekly. "I find it about as credible as Bob Hanssen's."

He added that if Vise had been trying to move his book up the New York Times bestseller list, "it's atrocious behavior. It breaks the rules of fair play. It hurts publishers and authors who play by the rules. It hurts the credibility of the list. And it hurts B&N.com."

Mary Ellen Keating of Barnes & Noble says that her company does not comment on the purchasing habits of its customers, but that if Vise really wanted to clear up the matter of how many books he purchased and how many he returned, he would agree to let Barnes & Noble release his customer information.

Last night Vise provided The Post with sales details from his Barnes & Noble account. According to Barnes & Noble sales records supplied by Vise, he -- and others through his Web site -- purchased 18,468 books, of which 9,678 were returned. Vise said these figures included some sales of other titles through his Web site, and that purchases of his book totaled 16,340. He said that not all of his returns had been logged in yet. He also provided The Washington Post with several partial American Express bills to illustrate his "pattern of buying." The records indicate that in late January and early February, he bought several thousand books.

The bills state that he returned 650 of them. Explaining statements that the returns had been in the thousands, he said he expects to receive credit for the rest of his returns on future bills. "That's everything I have in terms of American Express bills that show charges from Barnesandnoble.com," Vise says.

The book is No. 4 on this week's New York Times bestseller list, and, according to Vise's publisher, will be No. 5 on Sunday's list; it will be No. 4 on Sunday's Washington Post list. Yesterday afternoon it was No. 17 on the Barnes & Noble online list and No. 126 at Amazon.com.

The New York Times takes measures to prevent someone from manipulating its bestseller list by making bulk purchases, the paper reports.

In a way, the story of how Vise amassed his mountains of books is a comedy of errors. He ordered his first 4,000 or so at a discount from Barnesandnoble.com when the retail price was $25.

As the book scaled the bestseller lists, Barnesandnoble.com dropped its price to $17.50. Vise says he tried to receive credit on the 4,000 books stacked in his garage.

Barnesandnoble.com told him it could not give him credit until he returned his books. He shipped them back and ordered 4,000 more.

Before the second shipment left the warehouse, however, the price on the book dropped again -- to $15, Vise says. This time Barnesandnoble.com instructed him to decline the second shipment and order 4,000 at the new reduced price.

He did. But the order did not go through at first because Vise's credit card company did not authorize the sale. Barnesandnoble.com asked him to place his order again. He did with a second credit card number. Then both orders streamed through the system and 8,000 books were bound for Bethesda.

"If they had provided me with credit," Vise says of Barnesandnoble.com. "I would never have sent any back or had the need to order any new books."

He says, "The whole thing is crazy."

Publishing insiders have wondered why Vise didn't buy directly from his publisher at the author's usual 40 percent discount.

Grove/Atlantic's Entrekin says that economically, it made more sense for Vise to buy from Barnesandnoble.com. The author received discounts because he also served as a frequent buyer and as a bookseller. Plus, there was free shipping.

When the book was $25, Vise was paying just about what he would have paid Grove/Atlantic. In his calculations, he deducted his royalty and the free shipping from the price of the book.

As the retail price dropped dramatically at Barnesandnoble.com, Vise saved substantially more money. "And I passed those along to the customer," he says.

"My goal was never to make money on books."

He says he has sold "in the low thousands" from his Web site and other online sales. He has about 685 books left in his garage.

He says he offered the books at deep discount because "I wanted to generate buzz and word of mouth about the book."

Vise, 42, won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize as a financial reporter for The Post, where he has been since 1984.

2002 The Washington Post Company

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