Ted Cruz reported to have bought thousands of copies of his own book

Ted Cruz’s campaign has been reported to have bought thousands of copies of his own book from book stores after its release.

According to Forbes, more than $150,000 was spent at the US book chain Books-A-Million months after the Texas senator’s book was published.

Cruz’s book, One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History gained him almost $320,000 as an advance from publisher Regnery Publishing, and nearly half of that was spent on purchasing back the book.

Other senators have “books” named as expenses, according to Forbes, but their purchases are always around $20k. Ted Cruz’s end-of-year report filed with the Federal Election Commission, reveals that two weeks after his book was published, his campaign spent double the usual amount, around $40,000, at Books-A-Million, then later spent another $1,500, and in December, another $111,900, all purchases named as “books”.

Forbes speculated how the purchases could be to boost book sales, quoting Brett Kappel, a campaign finance specialist lawyer, who stated that “the FEC has issued a long series of advisory opinions allowing members to use campaign funds to buy copies of their own books at a discount from the publisher, provided that the royalties they would normally receive on those sales are given to charity”.

Cruz’s campaign wouldn’t be the first to do this, clearly, and they probably won’t be the last.