Is Michael Moore trying to fatten up… his book ranking?

Fatuous filmmaker Michael Moore’s book “Stupid White Men” has been hovering on the New York Times Best Sellers list (hardcover non-fiction) for 40 weeks now. But what’s this little dagger (+) on the listing? “A dagger indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders.”

Every once and a while, a sharp eye will see that dagger on a NYT book listing. Sometimes the bulk orders are a response to a popular figure, as may be the case with “The Savage Nation” by talk-show host Michael Savage. But other times the bulk orders are an orchestrated attempt to push a book title onto the bestsellers list, thus creating an illusion of popularity or legitimacy. For example, see here for a story about how Michael Ovitz’s Artists Management Group tried to push on the bestseller list a book by an Amway founder. Also, take note of this excerpt from Publishing Trends:

Five years ago, Business Week rattled the industry with an expose about the alleged ''dirty tricks'' that helped a couple of ethically challenged authors get their book, The Discipline of Market Leaders (Perseus Books) on the New York Times and Business Week bestseller lists. The article revealed that management consultants Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema spent at least $250,000 to have a ring of buyers purchase 10,000 or more copies of their book from key retailers around the country. In addition, they funneled bulk purchases of another 30,000 to 40,000 copies through a web of bookstores. That way, sales would be counted in the retail tallies without arousing any single retailer's suspicions that the overall purpose was to pad the numbers of reporting stores, and thereby -- as Business Week writer Willy Stern put it -- ''breach the integrity'' of the bestseller list.

Treacy and Wiersema's goal? Not to sell gazillions of books, though some business bestsellers do. (Discipline continues to be a bestseller. More important for these consultants was to appear to have written a ''national bestseller.'' Along with such a designation would come speaking engagements -- at $30,000 a pop -- and lucrative consulting assignments, which would increase the fortunes of CSC Index, the firm they worked for and with which they shared the copyright. CSC, after all, knew the power of brand-name authors. Two years earlier , Reengineering the Corporation, a book written by CSC consultants Michael Hammer and James Champy, sold 2 million copies -- and business at the consultancy boomed.

If Michael Moore is purchasing his own book, is it ipso facto a “bulk” order? Sorry….I couldn’t resist.