I like to make my book buying choices on the basis of reviews and excerpts. Those are more reliable than bestseller status and rankings.

I don’t know anything about bestseller award forums—have never heard of them, so I can’t address your question.

The bookseller doesn’t object because its goal is to sell books, and these campaigns obviously generate sales over the short term. The promotion company makes money on the promotion. The author gets to call himself a bestselling author, and that status probably generates future sales. Other authors who don’t participate in this kind of campaign aren’t necessarily hurt because most wouldn’t make bestseller status even if the one book being promoted this way wasn’t a bestseller on that particular day.

Consumers may be better off using something other than bestseller status to determine what books they buy. Reviews and contest wins can be manipulated, too, as discussed in other installments in this series. I prefer to choose books based on reviews from reviewers I trust (such as book bloggers and Goodreads reviewers I have read enough to know their taste) rather than customer reviews at Amazon, etc. And I really like to read excerpts—often available from the publisher or author Web site, from Google Books, or Search inside the book at Amazon, and similar programs.

It’s sad to think that some people do this … but people do things like this in all walks of life every day.