PW: Soup's On and Getting Even Hotter

Daisy Maryles |

Jan 05, 1998

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Soup's On and Getting Even Hotter
Daisy Maryles -- 1/5/98
Health Communications has had a remarkable run during the last four years with its Chicken Soup for the Soul titles. Through the end of November, total sales of the 13 titles was at about 24 million in the U.S. alone (the books are also available in 22 other languages worldwide). Not surprisingly, sales soared even higher in December. Five titles -- Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, ...for the Woman's Soul, ...for the Mother's Soul....for the Christian Soul and the book that launched the series, Chicken Soup for the Soul, were among the top 10 trade paperback bestsellers as the year came to a close. Four more Soup books, Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work, A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup, A 3rd Serving of ..., A 4th Course of... made the top 40-trade list the last two weeks of the year.
A non-Soup title is also doing exceptionally well for Health Communications. A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer, published in 1995, has also been hitting some of the national charts. That book got a new sales life in October when it was featured for the whole hour on the Montel Williams show. Pelzer talked about his life -- often described as the one of the most severe child-abuses cases in California history -- and his remarkable courage. Now a motivational speaker, he was honored as one of the 10 outstanding young Americans in 1993 and the only American honored in 1994 as one of the outstanding young persons of the world. After an original first printing of 10,000, total copies in print is now more than 205,000. The book is part of a trilogy, and book two, The Lost Boy, was published in November with a 50,000-copy first printing.
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A version of this article appeared in the 01/05/1998 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: