Get Out of the Self-Help Section! David Martorano, The "Winning" Guide to Shelf Help

THE TOP 10 SECRETS OF BESTSELLING SELF-HELP AUTHORS!

1. Dream up a catchy title that reduces complicated problems into an easily digestible sound bite (preferably one that can be reused or modified in sequels, workbooks and other franchise spin-offs).  Don’t worry so much about what it means.  Instead, ask yourself:  Is it grabby?  Will it sound good coming out of the mouths of talk-show hosts and local-news anchors?  Will it pre-select (see #2) its readers?  See the “Self-Help Salad Bar” section to build your title from prefab building blocks.
2. Along with your title, your back-cover blurb and introduction must pre-select your reader.  Hey, such a person should say upon seeing it, this is about me!  Your book should immediately ask pre-selecting questions (see “pre-selection, a pre-primer”) that will elicit “yes” answers from this reader; by the time she answers a third question in the affirmative, she will believe you know her intimately and will be primed to accept your diagnosis and cure.
3. Establish your authority early and often.  Don’t worry that your only degree is from a mail-order “healing institute” (see #9) in Guyana or a Kollege of Koaching.  Your credentials are much less important than your claim that you have overcome adversity (see “hard-knockery”).  Remind the reader that through your own suffering you’ve been able to look deeply into their problems and discover the solution.  If he questions your authority, it’s because he’s “resisting” and doesn’t love himself.
4. Use power numbers – as in “top ten secrets,” “seven habits,” “12 steps,” “101 ways,” etc.  These numbers have magical significance for readers.  Pad your list to hit a power number.  If you only have 43 legitimate points, add filler until you hit 101.  Remember: 43 is a loser number. No one cares about 43.  See #10 for more about padding.
5. Front-load your best material.  The reader must feel her life is being changed immediately; by the middle of the book she’ll be too excited about how much she’s getting out of it to pay much attention to the words.
6. Invent your own terms.  Don’t define them too closely, so they can be stretched to mean anything.  The important thing is to use them constantly so the reader feels he is picking up useful life tools.  Use them to boil the most complex issues down to an easy-to-follow “good vs. bad” formula, as in “self-activated vs. self-limited” or “forward energy” vs. “backward energy.”
7. Make lots of lists (which fills up space – see #10) and encourage the reader to make lots of lists (which makes him feel like he’s participating in his own growth/change/etc.).
8. Always remind the reader that he must have a positive attitude, especially toward your book.  Directing one’s thoughts, sending out intentions and suchlike tactics are an excellent way to make the mark, er, reader feel she’s making progress.  “Positive energy” is the infinitely renewable fuel of the self-help world.
9. Have some kind of “institute” of  “healing” or “wellness” or “awareness.”  You can build an institute easily by renting a P.O. box and putting up a rudimentary website.  And don’t forget the stationery!
10. Padding is everything.  You’re unlikely to have more useful information and/or ideas than would fit on a napkin, but by adding pages and pages and pages and pages of restatement, recycling and reformulation, you’ll have a book that’s too long to read in the bookstore – the reader must buy it. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of padding, reiteration and restatement. In fact, I cannot possibly overstate how important padding and reiteration are, especially in the context of restatement.

 

How to Repackage Ideas and Win Book Deals

Dale Carnegie’s seminal work How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1936, is often credited with spawning the self-help movement.  That’s a shame, since I’m an admirer of this little book, and would hate to see old Dale blamed for some of the garbage he’s inspired.

How to Win Friends argues that you can persuade people to do the things you want them to do primarily by (a) expressing a genuine interest in them as human beings, or at least enough to remember their names, and (b) offering them a “win-win” opportunity whenever possible – showing them how doing what you ask will benefit both of you.  Carnegie offers a number of other suggestions for persuading people by being a good and thoughtful listener, using empathy as a basis for building consensus and priming others for positive action, whether at work or in a personal relationship.

These are incredibly valuable principles.  They’re so valuable, in fact, that self-help authors have been repackaging them in increasingly abstruse, long-winded and quasi-mystical ways ever since.

Carnegie doesn’t lay claim to wizardly powers, nor does he suggest that merely by reading his work you will have anything on earth you could possibly desire.  He also doesn’t pad out his work to gargantuan lengths in order to justify a hefty price tag – and he certainly didn’t create a self-help empire of multimedia products and daily-inspiration text-message subscriptions.

One of his acolytes, Stephen R. Covey, wrote 1989’s best-selling 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Covey claims to have read all the relevant literature and ventures that Carnegie’s brand of self-help, based on what he dubs the “character ethic,” was followed, in the modern era, by the “personality ethic.”  Thus books that showed readers how to build character and be a better person in pursuit of their goals gave way to ones that showed how to create a persona that would get them the desired results.  In other words, character building turned into something more superficial and possibly even sociopathic – personality posturing.

Naturally, Covey puts himself in the Carnegie category, offering a “principle-centered paradigm.”  But does he belong there?  For one thing, he reformulates a couple of Carnegie’s ideas, padding out the basics to get to his power number of seven.  Along the way, we’re told to “be proactive” (now an all-encompassing buzzword, here used to mean taking responsibility for one’s actions); to delegate (easier to do if you have underlings); to “synergize” (another all-purpose buzzword, here applied to teamwork that gets the most out of everybody); and to “sharpen the saw” (using recreation to recharge the mind).  Then come several bewildering diagrams and a whole lot of blather.

In fact, Covey enjoys clouding issues so much, that even his title concept of effectiveness becomes shrouded by the P/PC quotient. P stands for production…, and PC stands for production capability. Now pardon me for getting all analytical, but couldn’t that more simply be put as effectiveness? Also, at nearly four-hundred pages, is Covey really effectively getting his message across?

As far as I can tell Covey’s first three habits “Be Proactive…Put First Things First… Begin with the End in Mind,” sound like the same thing. His next three are even more shameless “Seek First to understand…Then to be understood” not only sounds real bibley, but it’s a shameless rip-off of Dale Carnegie’s entreating us to empathize. Next he borrows anew from the book of Dale with “Think Win Win,” no explanation required. He rounds this trio off with “Synnergize.” Is synergize a principle? And isn’t it real similar to win win?

Sharpen the Saw, the seventh great secret of efficacy, means keep practicing. Basically, to sum up Mr. Covey’s work in a simple sentence, I come up with this. You should always plan before acting empathetically, and, if possible, propose a plan of action that puts your best foot forward, and keeps everybody’s needs in mind.

Another talent Mr. Covey has is padding, through reiteration and replication. His seven habits triangles in square diagram appears full page no fewer than eleven times in his book. Do we really need a Masonic swirlygram repeated eleven times just to get it into our skulls? In all fairness he does darken in different sections, so that we don’t forget what section we’re in when we wake up in a puddle of drool.

This is all well and good, I suppose, but if this is a self-sufficient program for effectiveness, why was it necessary for Covey to publish such successors as The Power Of The 7 Habits: Applications And Insights, Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, Beyond the Seven Habits and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness?  Because in spite of himself, Covey is the creator of his own personality cult.  But at the very least he acknowledges that changing one’s character takes time and serious effort.  In this, he differs from many of his fellow self-help profiteers.

Edited By Simon Glickman, PhD.

What’s So Bad About Feeling Good? Only a Few Things

Since self-help books traditionally employ fables, parables, anecdotes and unsourced urban legends as points of departure – using what I’ve dubbed fairy dusting for purposes of padding – I see no reason not to do the same. Only in my case, the story is actually relevant, and avowedly fictional.

One of my favorite tales from childhood is “Stone Soup,” in which a mysterious visitor to a hungry and beleaguered village beguiles the local community with a magical soup recipe to fill their bellies and warm their spirits. The alleged secret to this wondrous preparation? A special stone. Swirling said rock, with meaningful gestures, in the water, the stranger bids the locals to add their paltry meat, carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions and other goods; eventually a rich and nourishing broth is cooked, and the villagers delight in their repast.

The story endures because it tells us we are less poor when we pool our efforts, and what we have is more than what we think we have; the stone could be said to represent the spirit of cooperation – indeed, community itself.

Self-help authors are a lot like the stone-swirling stranger, offering that bit of “magic” that can be had for, you should pardon the expression, a wad of cabbage. The work that readers are asked to do (making lists, scrutinizing relationships) could be said to represent their contribution to the ingredients of the soup. The difference, of course, is that the magic stone costs money – and promises a lot more than a hot meal.

So when you’re in the self-help aisle, beware of strangers offering soup.

As you might imagine, I mean Chicken Soup for the Soul. Why would I criticize such an apparently well-intentioned book? A tome that launched an empire of soul-soup canneries, instant-soul-soup kits and other benign, brothy blandishments? Why would I warn readers to steer clear of a nice book full of nice anecdotes about nice people doing nice things?

Let me count the ways.

For one thing, this magic stone soup is a waste of your money. It offers very little in the way of nourishment – in the time-honored tradition of canned soups, it is a thin, artificially seasoned industrial brew with a homespun label.

What it has, like all the most successful self-help books, is a dynamite title. It sounds like something you’d want, right? If chicken soup makes you feel better when you have a cold, then by all rights your ailing spirit (or something) could use the textual equivalent of a hot bowl of poultry-based liquid. Or something.

Well, it’s best not to think about it too much. As Ronald Reagan once said, “a mind is a terrible thing.”

The point is that author/editor Jack Canfield has set in motion the ultimate self-help machine. He’s collected the narrative version of meat, carrots and turnips from across the self-help village – in the form of stories of love, hope and faith from various motivational speakers and others – folded them into his broth, swirled his stone and served it up to the world.

Why Ruin a Good Story With the Truth?

When you open up this Canfield Soup, you’ll encounter heartstring-tugging stories that have more or less the same punch line: love is all that matters. Love is everything. All you need is love. I like the Beatles as much as the next guy, but the dude who wrote that lyric also claimed to be a walrus. The fact is, love is not all you need. It’s hugely important, but you don’t need a book to tell you that. However, if you haven’t eaten in 24 hours and the guy at the lunch counter says today’s special is love, your response is likely to be less than heartwarming.

The first spoonful of Chicken Soup is attributed to the motivational speaker Eric Butterworth (more on him in a bit). It’s a long and dubious yarn in which a college sociology professor’s students (no names are provided, of course) are instructed to interview some 200 kids in a Baltimore slum. Also, there are no girls, do slum schools in Baltimore not have girls? The class considers the prospects of these youngsters to be very dim indeed, given the kids’ “environmental problems.” Indeed, the prognosis given for each is “he doesn’t stand a chance.” Sounds like some pretty rigorous scholarship, doesn’t it? The reports from these researches are “filed away.”

Some 25 years later, another sociology professor (again, no names or dates) decides to follow up; another class of students is dispatched to look into the fates of these urban urchins. Shockingly, almost all of them have gone on to become “lawyers, doctors and businessmen” (you’ll be unsurprised to hear that no further specifics are forthcoming). But how did these disadvantaged kids overcome their grave “environmental problems” and flourish? The incredibly easy-to-track-down professionals, to a man, all say, “There was a teacher.” The incredibly easy-to-track-down teacher (the description of whose benign countenance contains more detail than the rest of the story) smiles and says, “I loved those kids.”

You see? A teacher who loves her students, in the most dire, underfunded, disadvantaged school, spurs a 97% success rate. Sounds impossible, right? Right.

I had hoped Eric Butterworth himself might be able to bolster this tale’s credibility, so I sent a query off to him at his foundation. I received the following courteous -- if not terribly illuminating – reply from one Justin Morley.

Dear David,

Thank you for your inquiry about Eric’s story in Chicken Soup. Eric Butterworth passed on to the Eternal Flow Of Life five years ago. He used that story in many of his lectures and radio broadcasts. We have not, as yet, been able to find an instance where he gave more details on the story. I am sure, in having known and worked with him for 40 years, that the story is authentic. The details may still be in some of his papers or lectures, but these are so vast that it would be very difficult to find them. However, if we do learn more about the story, we will let you know.

Justin furnished a transcript of a Butterworth address containing a version of the teacher anecdote and urged me to visit the foundation’s website, “where you can listen to a different inspirational message from him every day.”

I was tempted to follow up with a request that Justin forward my question to Mrs. Butterworth, who probably knows more about the Flow of Life than anyone – and who might offer the perfect complement to all this syrupy sentiment. But these bland assurances of authenticity, combined with the deferral due to EB’s “vast” library of papers, don’t do much to keep the needle on my bullshit meter out of the red.

But here’s the thing about Chicken Soup – most of its tales are obviously made up, like squishy, saccharine versions of the ghost stories kids tell at summer camp. Instead of the hook-handed killer, we get the spectral visitation by the dead but still adoring parent. And instead of shivering with fright, the reader is meant to well up at these examples of love. The intro to the book notes that some of the stories had to be retyped five times in order “to work as well in print as they do live.”

One wonders what miracles were wrought by all this retyping. It reminds me of the literary version of playing telephone. Some of these tales may have some basis in truth, but there’s no way to separate the occasionally veracious from the broadly fabricated. Do a website query on any of the key terms and you’ll find plenty of hits – all pointing back to Chicken Soup. Tons of self-helping sites redistribute these dubious narratives, constantly cementing the idea that they’re somehow true. Just like an urban myth.

Chicken Soup “Retyping” Exercise
Take a story and retype it five times for soup-making purposes.
Add one point each for making it:

• Longer
• “Truthier”
• Cornier
• Creepier

There’s the story of the class charged with handing out blue ribbons to people who “make a difference,” and how a guy in an office gives one to his nasty, overbearing boss for being a “creative genius,” and the nasty boss/ bad dad in turn drives home and gives one to his son to apologize for being a rather neglectful parent – upon which the son reveals that this act prevented him from committing suicide. Which of course the father must have reported back to the employee, who then told the student. Or the “hugging judge,” who hands out little heart stickers in exchange for hugs from all and sundry – and whose reluctant embrace of a droolingly retarded hospital patient wrings tears from all the doctors and nurses and orderlies because it’s the first time they’ve seen “Leonard” smile in 23 years. “How simple it is,” Canfield interjects, “to make a difference in the lives of others.” Simple is the word, all right.

My personal favorite: The man on the Mexican beach who finds a “local native” (as opposed to the visiting kind, I suppose) picking up starfish from the surf and tossing them back in the water, thinking he’ll save them from a “lack of oxygen,” of all things. The observer notes that there are too many starfish on too many beaches for the “native” to make a difference, but the wise Mexican replies, “I made a difference to that one.”

I’m no marine biologist, but I’m pretty sure that those starfish were beached for a reason, and that this well-intentioned gentleman was not helping them. In fact, it took about 14 seconds of online research to confirm that starfish can live out of water for up to five days, and that they die of dehydration, not lack of oxygen. One imagines this same guy on a rampage at a YMCA pool, flinging children out of the shallow end and dumping them on the concrete because human beings can’t breathe in water. Would we praise him for making a difference then?

Ladling It Out

Chicken Soup isn’t merely a well-meaning, if dimwitted, little volume of fables. It’s a gigantic industry of feel-good goo, churning out hundreds of titles targeting every imaginable demographic. Chicken Soup for the Christian, Jewish, Latino Soul; for expectant mothers; for brides; for middle-schoolers; for golfers – who presumably learn the importance of loving their balls – for dieters, military wives and entrepreneurs. There’s Chicken Soup for the Soul in Menopause (served extra-hot, one imagines). Chicken Soup: Diabetes (hold the sugar). Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul. Chicken Soup for the Horse-Lover’s Soul (in two volumes). A Tribute to Moms. The Wisdom of Dads. Christian Teens Talk. Sopa de Pollo Para el Alma de la Pareja (for the souls of Spanish-speaking couples). In a cold sweat two days before Christmas? You can find a Chicken Soup title at the last minute for everyone on your gift list.

The Chicken Soup website invites you to send in your own story; interestingly, the site insists submitted stories be true and not second-hand, perhaps fearing copyright-infringement suits. Published contributions are rewarded with $200 and 10 free copies of the book, which explains how the franchise remains so prolific and profitable.

But after all, you might argue, what’s the harm? People read these stories and get a little lift from them, whether they’re true or not – and whether they even make sense or not. Perhaps so. But Canfield’s claims are surprisingly ambitious:

We know everything we need to know to end the needless emotional suffering that many people experience. High self-esteem and personal effectiveness are available to anyone willing to take the time to pursue them.

Speaking as someone who deals with real emotional suffering – needless and otherwise –on a daily basis, I beg to differ. We don’t already know everything we need to know. That’s why we do therapy – to find out stuff we don’t know yet. I also have a bit of experience in helping people improve their self-esteem and personal effectiveness. It takes a lot of hard work, and it’s different for every patient. If sticky bromides about hugging and love and blue ribbons and little heart stickers and flinging hapless starfish actually relieved any suffering in the world, I’d be all for them.

But this is the norm in the self-help aisle – the magic stone that makes the magic soup and offers a shortcut to happiness, fulfillment, meaning, riches, weight loss or what have you. These books continue to wash up on our shores, of course, because a lot of people believe in the magical shortcut. Visitors to the self-help shelf will save a lot of time and money by simply committing to do the hard work necessary to make the changes they want. And if they really need chicken soup, they should head to the grocery store.