Seeking Health and Happiness: Self-Help 2011 (cont.)

First Comes Love

Dating and relationships are another of the perennially popular subjects for self-help books, and this season offers a large crop. Upcoming titles include the paperback reprint Love for No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love by Marci Shimoff (Free Press, Dec.) and Wabi Sabi Love by Arielle Ford (HarperOne, Jan.), about learning to appreciate a partner’s imperfections. HarperOne publisher Mark Tauber notes that self-help titles that double as books on relationships or spirituality are making strong showings these days.

“The relationship category is still an evergreen one, as long as you have a new and fresh angle. Science-based advice, in particular, seems to be working quite well,” says Tarcher executive editor Sara Carder. She points to a forthcoming Tarcher title: Attached (reprinting in paperback in January), in which psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel S.F. Heller use studies in the field of adult attachment to explain how to create sustainable love.

In December, Three Rivers Press will publish The Breakup Bible: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Healing from a Breakup or Divorce by Rachel A. Sussman, and in January Gotham will offer Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up by Harriet Lerner. In April, St. Martin’s Press/Griffin will publish Naked Dating: Five Steps to Finding the Love of Your Life by Harlan Cohen, author of The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run into in College (Sourcebooks, 2005). And in Worth Fighting For (Atria, Jan.), Lisa Niemi Swayze, the widow of the late actor Patrick Swayze, reminisces about the couple’s final months together and describes her journey through grief.

“Jake,” who has proffered dating advice in Glamour magazine since 1956 (different anonymous men have penned the column over the years), is the author of Always Hit on the Wingman (Hyperion, Jan.). The hardcover has an announced first printing of 50,000 copies. Updated Classics

While such subcategories as relationships and aging are holding steady, the world outside of the self-help category is changing rapidly, rendering some classic titles partially obsolete. In response to the brave new world of social networking and other modern inventions, several self-help publishers are updating the classics. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 30 million copies in the 75 years since its initial publication. Though Carnegie himself died in 1955, Dale Carnegie and Associates, which organizes leadership and public speaking seminars, lives on. Earlier this month, Simon & Schuster published its How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age, which offers advice on using Carnegie’s methods over e-mail and other digital pathways rather than in person. Next month, S&S will publish Social Q’s: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries, and Quagmires of Today by Philip Galanes, who answers questions in an etiquette column of the same name in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times.

In March 2012, HCI will publish an updated 10th anniversary edition of The Power of Focus by Les Hewitt with Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. And in April, Hyperion will publish 150,000 copies of the paperback original Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Moms by Kristine Carlson. It will be the first new addition to the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff series in nine years and will have a more modern look. “The series, launched with the megabestseller Don’t Sweat

the Small Stuff... and It’s All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson in 1997, has proven to be an enduring success in the self-help category throughout the years,” says Hyperion associate publisher Kristin Kiser, “with almost 10 million copies in print in the U.S. alone—and 25 million in print internationally. Kris Carlson, who is Richard Carlson’s widow and the author of a number of titles in the series, offers valuable advice and inspiration for how moms can create a nurturing environment in which their families can thrive, without burning out in the process.”