Given the marketing savvy and general popularity of Suzanne Somers, it's no surprise that her Eat Great, Lose Weight and Get Skinny on Fabulous Food are mid-six-figure-range bestsellers.
But what's is it that's attracting readers to the clunky -- if not downright scary -- sounding diet book The Schwarzbein Principle?
Actually, it has to do, in part, with Somers. The book, a May original trade paperback release from Chicken Soup for the Soul series publisher Health Communications, is by Diana Schwarzbein, a 39-year-old Santa Barbara, Calif., endocrinologist, who helped Somers develop her popular low-carb/controlled sugar intake program. Schwarzbein also provides the scientifically validating introduction to Somers's Get Skinny.
Schwarzbein's own book tour helped get The Schwarzbein Principle to its current level of 25,000 copies in print but Somers's mention of the endocrinologist during her promotion of Get Skinny particularly plumped up sales. After Somers praised The Schwarzbein Principle on Larry King Live, sales jumped nearly 40%.
Somers isn't Schwarzbein's only celebrity advocate. Surfers of Amazon. com will see a glowing customer review from one Larry Hagman -- yes, J.R. from Dallas -- who lost 25 pounds after his recent liver transplant by following Schwarzbein's program.
Hagman said he no longer has to inject insulin because his diabetes is now under control.
In fact, Schwarzbein first developed her program primarily to help her diabetic patients. A few years ago, she self-published a book about her regimen, ultimately distributing 6000 copies both to her diabetic and nondiabetic patients, and to others who began to hear about the book through word of mouth.
One of those was Ojai, Calif., literary agent Barbara Neighbors Deal, who consulted with Schwarzbein for personal reasons. "I've been on all sorts of diets, but this is the only one that works -- I lost 97 pounds in 10 months," said Deal.
Deal then made a three-book deal for Schwarzbein with HCI, for The Schwarzbein Principle (a repackage of the original self-published book) and the simultaneous release of accompanying vegetarian and non-vegetarian cookbooks.
What's next? Deal said Schwarzbein is developing a book on menopause, to which HCI has right of first refusal.
Diabetes research is also behind The Glucose Revolution: The Authoritative Guide to the Glycemic Index -- The Groundbreaking Medical Discovery by Thomas M.S. Wolever, Stephen Colagiuri, M.D., and Kaye Foster-Powell, a team of Australian and Canadian nutritionists, which was edited by Jennie Brand Miller. Publisher Marlowe & Co. is shipping the book to stores now, but it has been Amazon.com's prepub bestseller list for several weeks before its release -- at one point as high as #11.
That's enough to give any publisher a blood-sugar rush, but it is precisely this concern about blood sugar -- assessing diet using the glycemic index (GI), which ranks carbohydrates according to how high they raise blood sugar -- that has attracted readers.
Marlowe's acquisition of the book stems, in part, from a very personal concern. Editor Matthew Lore, himself recently diagnosed with diabetes, decided that his doctor's advice was inadequate and surfed the Internet for alternative therapies. He discovered a book called The G.I. Factor, published by Hodder in Australia, went after the rights and renamed it The Glucose Revolution.
Marlowe's renamed book attracted prepub buzz thanks to the authors' appearance at a recent diabetes conference. Their talk, in which they advocated not the elimination of sugar but simply better management of glycemic consumption, was reported by a Knight-Ridder journalist. The story, which mentioned the book, was picked up by the Seattle Times, the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger and the Houston Chronicle. The book also is being discovered online, as it was by Lore, and health gurus like Rick Mendosa have mentioned it on their Web sites.
All this momentum has led Marlowe to accelerate the release of the book, which had been planned for September. The first printing was bumped to 17,500 from 14,000 and Marlowe has an overprint of 2500 jackets ready for a second printing. Not bad for a small press -- and for what is a relatively scientific title.
And for those wanting information in briefer, more lay terms, Marlowe also picked up from Hodder six pocket guides (addressing the topics of sports performance, diabetes, low GI foods, losing weight, sugar and energy, and the heart), which, to meet demand, will now be issued this winter instead of next spring.
