Self-help may have finally shed its touchy-feely stigma, thanks to a slew of books with profanity in their titles and no-holds-barred language between the covers.

Jen Sincero has sold over a million copies in paperback of a book whose title seems downright quaint these days: 2013’s You Are a Badass (Running Press). Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (HarperOne, 2016) continues to do well, already selling more than 381,000 hardcover copies in 2017 alone.

“For a long time, we thought self-help had to be so earnest,” says Michelle Howry, executive editor at Hachette Books. She started paying attention to a trend she calls “mouthy self-help books” in light of Manson’s popularity. Fabrice Midal’s The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t (Hachette Books, Dec.), which has sold well in the author’s native France, caught Howry’s attention because, she explains, it says in frank language that “it’s okay to be angry, be tired, be silly, be passionate.” Midal encourages readers to give themselves a break from social and self-imposed stresses in chapters including “Stop Trying to Understand Everything” and “Stop Tormenting Yourself.”

Author Amy Alkon, an early adopter of the foul-mouthed trend with her Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck (Griffin, 2014), says she hopes that the title of her new book, Unf*ckology (Griffin, Jan. 2018), makes clear that “this is not the same tiresome self-help crap that has not helped you yet.” Alkon uses research in neuropsychology and anthropology to inform her approach, which she calls “science help”—a term she credits to science writer David DiSalvo—rather than self-help. Drawing on embodied cognition, or the idea that the body influences the mind, she explains how rituals can calm you down and that “your feelings don’t have to be the boss of you.”

HarperOne, Mark Manson’s publisher, doubles down on the F word in October with F*cked: Being Sexually Explorative and Self-Confident in a World That’s Screwed. The authors, comedians Krystyna Hutchinson and Corinne Fisher, host the Guys We F****d podcast, which has more than 622,000 followers on SoundCloud. Because the approach of each author is so different from the other, says Hilary Lawson, editor at HarperOne, the book is written from two distinct perspectives rather than in one “we” voice. The result, she says, is that “the reading experience is almost like a live show, where they’re passing the proverbial mike back and forth.” Through personal stories, philosophical essays, and lists of takeaways and resources, the book aims to dismantle the concept of shame and help readers feel confident about their sexual choices—in other words, no f*cks given.

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