The Cost of Corrupting a Signal

It is really easy to buy your way onto the list. A quarter to a third of the books in the nonfiction section have bought their way there. You don't buy your way there by paying the New York Times. It's corrupt because if you organize around buying masses of books from the right bookstores on the right day, you can send a signal to the editors who put together the list. They will misinterpret that signal and put you on the list. The point is, once you realize that a signal has been corrupted, you have a choice. You can embrace the fact that it's corrupted because other people are still looking at the signal or you can walk away and invent new,