Exactly this. In germany we had a couple of scandals where somebody became a bestseller author by buying his own books and gifting them to everybody he meets in

Exactly this. In germany we had a couple of scandals where somebody became a bestseller author by buying his own books and gifting them to everybody he meets in bulk. So he basically paid for his sales himself and was of course also able to claim a tax benefit for it. Truth is not a democratic process and very hard to verify just by using data.