Why The New York Times Bestseller list is mostly irrelevant, but still important

In a bizarre case yesterday, Pajiba aired a long, investigative piece into a new book that gamed the New York Times Bestseller list. It gamed its sales through a bulk buying campaign by the publisher or the author (later confirmed by book vendors) and even shipped with a plagiarized cover.

The story started when YA author Phil Stamper started questioning how a publisher nobody had ever heard of managed to land a book in the NYT bestseller list, and started digging (and sharing) on Twitter.  A...