A British author has come under fire, for buying hundreds of copies of his own book in order to shoot it up the bestseller charts.

His name is Mark Dawson, and he wrote a thriller called The Cleaner.

The story goes he was only a few hundred short of making it to the top ten list, so sent an email out to his own network asking for expressions of interest if he placed a bulk order, would anyone buy.

He got some positive feedback so went ahead with an order of 400 books, no word on whether he has indeed on-sold them, or whether they're sitting in his office at home.

Jenny Hellen is the publishing director at Allen & Unwin. She joined the show to share her thoughts on the intriguing case!

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