Diverging from the topic a bit, but it's a pretty common practice in the political book realm, because it's a quick way to get the book listed on best-seller lists or to get high sales numbers that you can legally promote. Usually not the person themselves, though, but some sort of tenuously connected third party buying it in large numbers, often afterwards giving them out as gifts to donors or something like that. It's not actually fraud because the book is being sold, but it's definitely questionable. The idea is you lose money on the book in exchange for increasing prominence or awareness in the field and/or get true book sales accelerating after that by being able to claim it's a best-seller.