The Secret Bashing Begins

by Lynn Garrett, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/28/2007

Imitation is flattering, but you're nobody in spiritual publishing until other authors start lining up to debunk you. So, not surprisingly, there are a number books in the pipeline that dissect and attempt to discredit Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

First up in May is Thomas Nelson's There Is More to "The Secret" by Ed Gungor. Gungor is pastor of a church in Tulsa, Okla., and the author of several books, including last year's Religiously Transmitted Diseases for Nelson's now-defunct Ignite imprint. According to Nelson, Gungor's new book, "is not written to attack recent publications but rather to correct their misguided advice while still speaking to the felt need that is causing millions to explore their pages." Nelson expects to do a six-figure first printing. .

Next will come The Secret Revealed: Exposing the Truth About the "Law of Attraction" (Aug.) by Jim Garlow and Rick Marschall, from Hachette's FaithWords division. Garlow is the author (with Peter Jones) of Cracking Da Vinci's Code (Cook Communications/Victor Books), one of the most successful Da Vinci response books with nearly 335,000 copies sold. FaithWords promises that The Secret Revealed will discuss the Law of Attraction as typical of many false religions and movements throughout the centuries. FaithWords plans a 100,000 copy first printing.

Though not as blatantly out to bash The Secret as the first two titles, a third book promises to investigate whether the principles in it really work. St. Martin's Thomas Dunne imprint will publish Karen Kelly's The Secret of the Secret in August, billed as a wide ranging analysis based on interviews with experts from a variety of disciplines.

There will undoubtedly be more to come, as The Secret continues burning up the bestseller list. The book is likely to inspire a Da Vinci Code-size backlash.

At one point in the months leading up to the release of the movie version of The Da Vinci Code, there were more than 35 books on the market—most from evangelical Christian houses and some from Catholic publishers—purporting to crack, break, decode or in some other way expose the historical inaccuracies and theological offenses of Brown's novel. Some of those books, like Garlow's, sold well. Darrell Bock's Breaking the Da Vinci Code sold 300,00 copies for Thomas Nelson.

Of course, Da Vinci also spawned plenty of imitators, and the same is already happening with The Secret. "We've been flooded with proposals for Christian 'response' books, and most of them aren't very interesting or good," said Joel Fotinos, director of religious publishing for the Penguin Group and publisher for its Tarcher imprint. "We've also been flooded with proposals all saying they are the next Secret, and most of those haven't been that good either."