Helping Those Who Help Themselves

NEW YORK — Baby-care books, home-maintenance books, mental-health books, books on medical maladies, fitness books, financial advice, secrets of sports professionals, beauty advice, nutritional wisdom: The list is almost too vast to contemplate. Those who track the publishing industry are unable to say just how many self-help books are published, or consumed, each year. The answer is, millions and millions and millions and millions.

"I wish I had a figure for you," Fred Hills, vice president and senior editor at Simon & Schuster, said, "but I will say that it is the most reliable market in nonfiction publishing, and by and large it sells better in hardcover than it does in trade paper." Hills has been the editor for a number of best-selling authors in this genre, including M. Scott ("The Road Less Taken") Peck; Jane Fonda, Charles ("Wealth Without Risk"); Givens and Robert ("Nothing Down") Allen.

Shad Helmstetter, an author whose success in this genre has earned him the moniker of "the Dale Carnegie of the '90s," says that in the late '70s, he sat down to write "the ultimate self-help book." To do this, he studied "every self-help book there was, to find the thread" that held them together. His methodology clearly worked, for Helmstetter has sold many, many millions of books.

His experience in the fields of self-help books and seminars has convinced him that "you can talk to the average individual and that individual either reads these books, or listens to tapes, or goes to a seminar, or knows someone who does."

In the past, as the field has proliferated, self-help books have tended to extend all over the literary map. But recently, many in publishing have begun to see a change in the market, as self-help titles become more specialized and considerably more specific.

"There used to be far more general books; for example, all the psychology books," Rena Wolner, a special consultant to G. P. Putnam's Sons, said. "Now you are dealing with a much more specialized market."

"We don't get into the vague, touchy-feely books," said John Duff, director of what is known at Doubleday as "special interest" publishing.

"I like to call these books prescriptive books--that is, they answer in the affirmative the question: 'Can this book help me?' "