What's the best way to become a best-selling author? You could rely on word of mouth, great press, or just dumb luck. But that's all so uncertain. Here's another idea: buy your own product en masse.

Sarah Palin showed us how by using $63,000 of her own money to buy copies of her political memoir, Going Rogue, through her political action committee, Sarah PAC. It's hard to say how many copies the former Alaska governor got for that amount, though. If she paid the full cover price, her supply would be just under 2,200. If she bought them all on Amazon, she could have gotten close to 5,000 copies. Also, it depends on how much sales tax she had to fork over, which may have been less than the standard rate for buying the books in bulk. And because she brokered the deal with her own publisher, HarperCollins, the company may have given her a special discount.

Regardless, we're talking about a lot of books. Apparently, Palin is using them as "fundraising donor fulfillment," along with $8,000 worth of brightly colored bookmarks made by a Nashville-based event planning firm.

This would help account for why Sarah PAC raised over $2 million in 2009 and ended the year with just $900,000 in the bank. Sarah PAC also spent $20,000 to send Palin's personal photographer along on her national book tour last fall. With that kind of funding, it's no wonder she's a bestseller.