The statistics are grim: more than 50% of mortgages in the U.S. are underwater. Unemployment stands at 8.6%, the lowest figure since spring 2009, while outstanding student loan debt will exceed $1 trillion this year, outpacing credit card debt, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Department of Education.

In the third quarter of this year alone, the net worth of American households fell by $2.4 trillion. In a recent survey conducted by Wells Fargo, 75% of respondents said they anticipate working past retirement age. It’s no surprise that the Occupy movement has gained a foothold not just on Wall Street but all across the country. Last week, demonstrators occupied ports along the West Coast and forced shutdowns at shipping terminals in Oakland, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; and Longview, Wash. Goldman Sachs owns a large stake in port operator SSA Marine, which was a focus of the protests. Post-AIG, post–Lehman Brothers, post-bailout, many Americans have been left with the sinking feeling that the game is rigged, and not in their favor.

Julie Grau, publisher of Spiegel & Grau, says, “The Occupy movement’s message of the 99% has given the injustice and unfairness that people have been feeling a legitimacy and a collective voice. The growing mistrust of financial institutions more than ever has created a desire and a need in individuals to take control of their finances, to make decisions and take actions that will deliver security.”

Coming from Spiegel & Grau in January is the paperback edition of Suze Orman’s The Money Class: How to Stand in Your Truth and Create the Future You Deserve. (The hardcover ran for seven weeks on PW’s list back in March and April.) The latest edition incorporates new material on the debt ceiling debate, the subsequent downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, and the Occupy movement, as well as the latest legislation and information on rates up to November 2011.

Trends in New Titles

The updates to Orman’s title are indicative of a larger trend in personal finance books in general. Most publishers are working to adjust to the current situation, but there is a feeling that the dour climate could influence sales in the category either up or down. Under economic pressure and mistrustful of banks and other investment institutions, consumers may simply throw up their hands and place what little money they have left under the proverbial mattress, or they may try to handle their investments themselves, often relying on books—a relatively inexpensive source of advice—to do so. Obviously, publishers are gunning for the latter.

Grau continues, “We’re all looking for reason to be hopeful about the future. We want our hard work to pay off in the ways it did for our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. So it would make sense that a book that promises to restore a sense of hope and also promises to make you as bulletproof as possible to the vagaries of the economy is a book for these times.”

At Wiley, editorial director Debra Englander reports that the current climate of uncertainty is definitely having an effect on the types of books being published. She says, “The personal finance category is somewhat aligned with the mood of the country. People are distressed that the economy is still stalled, especially for the 99%. They want advice, but they’re skeptical. We can no longer publish generic ‘invest for retirement’ or ‘how to manage your debt’ titles. Instead, we look for authors who have many years of experience and insights into both bull and bear markets.”

Upcoming Wiley titles include MoneyShift: How to Prosper from What You Can’t Change by Jerry Webman (Apr.), chief economist at Oppenheimer Funds, which covers the large global economic shifts of recent years and details the new financial reality. Also on the Wiley list, next May, are The Aftershock Investor: A Crash Course in Staying Afloat in a Sinking Economy by David Wiedemer, Robert A. Wiedemer, and Cindy Spitzer, authors of America’s Bubble Economy: Profit When It Pops (Wiley, 2006), which predicted the bursting of the real estate, stock, and private debt bubbles, and The Little Book of Bull’s Eye Investing by John Mauldin (Apr.), whose previous title, Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything, has sold more than 50,000 copies in less than a year. The Little Book of Bull’s Eye Investing looks at what the author terms a “muddle-through economy.”

St. Martin’s editor-in-chief George Witte acknowledges that investing is more difficult than ever “in turbulent times” and anticipates that readers looking for a safe place to park and increase their money will turn, next May, not only to investment books such as Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power by Carol Pepper and Camilla Webster but also to such titles as The Real Crash, in which Peter Schiff provides an in-depth look at the country’s current economic woes and predicts a bleak future. (Schiff is pushing for the U.S. to declare bankruptcy and start over with a clean slate.) According to Witte, Schiff’s title “analyzes the core problems that our government won’t address and advises readers on how to protect their own finances from an imminent and even more profound collapse.”

At Perigee, publisher John Duff says, “There will always be books and authors promising untold riches that entertain more than they inform or appeal to the risk takers and gamblers. But these appear to be less popular among readers who are in the midst of a struggling economy and seeking actionable advice from a trustworthy source.” Perigee doesn’t often dip its toes into the personal finance category, but it has seen good results with Daniel R. Solin’s Smartest series: the latest just out is The Smartest Money Book You’ll Ever Read: Everything You Need to Know About Growing, Spending, and Enjoying Your Money. Solin is affiliated with Mint.com, a financial planning Web site with more than seven million subscribers that is endorsing the book.

According to McGraw-Hill business publisher Gary Krebs, “The state of the economy and the volatility of the markets haven’t shown much improvement since last year, which means every book and author in the finance area needs to be right on the money. For the short term, we’ve witnessed a trend of ‘mistrust’ within the financial community and are offering several titles that help investors get past the B.S. and know what to look for to avoid scams and invest safely.” Krebs points to Backstage Wall Street: An Insider’s Guide to Knowing Who to Trust, Who to Run From, and How to Maximize Your Investments by Wall Street insider Joshua Brown (Apr.), who blogs at TheReformedBroker.com; The Malign Hand of the Markets by John Staddon (Apr.), which offers a new spin on Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and purports that the insidious forces of Wall Street are destroying financial markets; and What’s Behind the Numbers?: A Guide to Exposing Financial Chicanery and Avoiding Huge Losses in Your Portfolio by John Del Vecchio (Aug.) as three titles that stand as examples of this tendency.

Longer term, Krebs reports that McGraw-Hill is betting on authors with sustainable online platforms. These include The Wall Street Cheat Sheet: The Proven Investing System for Winning with Stocks in Every Market by Derek Hoffman and Damien Hoffman (Jan.), the founders of TheWallStreetCheatSheet.com Web site, which is syndicated by Yahoo! Finance and receives more than one million unique visitors per month; Abnormal Returns: Winning Strategies from the Frontlines of the Investment Blogosphere by Tadas Viskanata (June), the founder and editor of the Abnormal Returns blog; and Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make and How to Avoid Them by CBS MoneyWatch.com columnist Larry Swedroe (Nov.).

Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Penguin’s Portfolio imprint, argues that personal finance books simply cycle along with the economy, so in a recession sales slow down, and when the market is high and real estate is booming, consumers purchase more books. In the meantime, Portfolio is publishing titles such as How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better Looking Than Your Parents by Zac Bissonnette (Apr.)—aimed at recent college graduates—and The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money by Carl Richards (Jan.). Richards, a financial adviser, writes for the Bucks blog on the New York Times Web site (bit.ly/vGcbH6). In November in an article titled “How a Financial Pro Lost His House,” (nyti.ms/uqTviq) he opened up in that newspaper about his personal story of having to resort to a short sale of his Las Vegas home—purchased with no money down and then used as a source for $200,000 in credit—that garnered hundreds of comments, not all of them admiring.

Rock Solid Investments

With both the stock market and the book market so uncertain, some publishers are sticking to the tried-and-true in the form of revised editions of titles that have proven their ability to attract an audience, or authors with solid track records. The Free Press has two forthcoming personal finance titles, both of them revisions. Coming in January is Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Psychological Edge by David Dreman, the chairman and chief investment officer of Dreman Value Management and a senior investment columnist at Forbes. His Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation was first published in 1998. In May, the Free Press will publish The Armchair Economist: Revised and Updated Economics for Everyday Life by Steven E. Landsburg, a professor of economics at the University of Rochester. Consisting of more than one-quarter new material, this paperback original revisits a book first published in 1993 and considers contemporary applications of economic theory.

Wiley’s Englander notes, “Virtually every investment topic has been covered in a book, online, and every other media—so we’re choosing books based on who the author is, his platform, and how the book can be positioned more uniquely. It’s more important than ever to have a track record, either previous books or a newsletter or an established readership.” In April, Wiley will publish a revised edition of Forbes columnist Ken Fisher’s The Only Three Questions That Still Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don’t, first published in 2006.

Wiley is also launching a personal finance publishing partnership with behemoth AARP (more than 40 million members) with Doug Shadel’s March title, Outsmarting the Scam Artists: How to Protect Yourself from the Most Clever Cons, geared to both older potential victims of scams and those seeking to protect their relatives from predatory schemes.

Other tried-and-true authors include Robert Kiyosaki, whose Rich Dad books from his Plata Publishing is just one part of an integrated platform that includes a Web site (www.RichDad.com), newsletter, seminars, an online game to test financial savvy, and the Rich Woman series for women by Kiyosaki’s wife, Kim Kiyosaki. Next up in the series is Awaken Your Child’s Financial Genius: Why A Students Work for C Students and Why B Students Work for the Government, coming in July.

And Crown Business is adding two additional titles to its established Wall Street Journal series: out this month is The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Fresh: How to Leave Financial Hardships Behind and Take Control of Your Financial Life by Karen Blumenthal, targeted to readers who have suffered in the recession or faced some other upheaval; coming in April is The Wall Street Journal Guide to Building Your Career by Jennifer Merritt.

Financial writer Jean Chatzky, too, has a strong track record and a solid platform: she currently has a column in Prevention magazine and is the financial editor on Today. In March, Rodale will publish Chatzky’s latest, the paperback original Money Rules: The Simple Path to Lifelong Security. Says publisher Stephen Perrine, “We saw a need in the marketplace for a simple but highly effective financial advice title that speaks to ‘the new normal’ that so many Americans are dealing with. It’s not just about economic uncertainty and high unemployment; it’s about that nagging worry that our social safety net is wearing thin, and that no one in government or in business seems to have the answer. People realize that when it comes to their financial health, neither their employer nor their government is going to be there to rescue them. They are going to have to fend for themselves, and they need a guide that will teach them how to do it.”

Grand Central’s Business Plus is also relying on high-profile experts for its upcoming titles. Headed by publisher and editor-in-chief Rick Wolff, the imprint will publish in January Buy High, Sell Higher: Why Buy-and-Hold Is Dead and Other Surprising Investing Lessons by CNBC personality Joe Terranova (aka “the Liquidator”), followed in April by No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Letters to My Grandchildren by investment adviser John D. Spooner, and Worth It... Not Worth It? Simple and Profitable Answers to Life’s Tough Financial Questions by Jack Otter, executive editor of CBS MoneyWatch.com, in May.

Says Wolff, “While Occupy Wall Street has certainly helped focus the spotlight on financial struggles in this country and elsewhere, it’s my sense that, traditionally, when money gets tight, Americans routinely start to spend more time on how they spend their money and how they’re preparing for the future in case of even more economic downturns. To that end, the personal finance category continues to be a major staple in the book business, and I have every expectation that presence will continue for many years to come.”

Finally, some authors are working to persuade readers that everything will be okay. As a result of the mistrust and uncertainty pervading the marketplace, there is a trend toward books that combine psychological self-help with financial advice. In Affluence Intelligence: Earn More, Worry Less, and Live a Happy and Balanced Life (Da Capo, Nov.) authors Stephen Goldbart and Joan Indursky DiFuria posit that true affluence is more than a monetary measure and consists of feeling secure, having work one loves, and living a life with meaning. In Portfolio’s All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending (Mar.), Laura Vanderkam studies the latest happiness research and argues that most of us have enough money to live as we wish, but we don’t know how to look at our finances properly.

Julie Grau sees another bright spot amid the disheartening news: “If there’s a silver lining to come out of the financial crisis of 2009, it’s that people are feeling the need to become more personally involved in their finances. They want autonomy. They’ve learned, albeit painfully, that it’s not safe to be on autopilot.”

We asked three publishers how they’re tailoring their books to the current economic situation.

“The messages in the Rich Dad books are timeless—and time-tested. I continue to stress the importance of getting smarter with your money and remain an outspoken advocate for the power of financial education. In the two books released this year—Unfair Advantage and Midas Touch (written with Donald Trump)—I make strong cases for the power of financial education, the importance of getting smarter with your money and the opportunities that those with an entrepreneurial mindset can enjoy. All messages that resonate in today’s economic climate. In 1997, when I wrote in Rich Dad Poor Dad that ‘your house is not an asset,’ I was challenged and ridiculed. Today, millions of people around the world have come to understand, firsthand, the truth of that statement.”

—Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad

“We’ve been publishing more books that offer consumers concrete strategies for getting more value for their dollar—not only in our personal finance titles (like How to Shop for Free) but across many categories, from cookbooks (Gluten-Free on a Shoestring, Wildly Affordable Organic) to wedding planning (A Practical Wedding: Creative Ideas for Planning a Beautiful, Affordable, and Meaningful Celebration). People have always turned to self-help to figure out how to save time, save money, or save their sanity—and right now saving money seems to be at the top of the wish list.”

—Katie McHugh, executive editor, Da Capo Press and Lifelong Books

“We don’t think the anti–Wall Street sentiment is having any significant impact on personal finance books. It’s probably having a bigger impact on political books. But on the business side what matters is the level of optimism people feel about the economy, real estate, and the stock market. Readers return to personal finance when they feel they can take proactive steps to improve their own situation.”

—Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher, Portfolio