Ted Cruz’s new biography hit shelves at the end of last month, and sold 11,854 copies in its first week. That’s already more copies than the majority of the books on the New York Times bestsellers list, Politico reports. But Cruz’s book still won’t be getting on that illustrious list.

The Times claims that this is because its rating system considers more than pure sales numbers, in order to “reflect authentic best sellers.”

"We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold," Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Politico. "This book didn't meet that standard this week.”

"Our goal is that the list reflect authentic best sellers, so we look at and analyze not just numbers, but patterns of sales for every book,” she said.

In a later statement, she more or less accused Cruz of attempting to artificially buy his way onto the list, saying, "In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”

Cruz's A Time For Truth has outsold 18 out of 20 books on the bestseller list.