Helping self-help books: Working towards a new research agenda

Self-help books are one of the most prolific and commercially successful book genres of the past 30 years (Smith 2002). Described as a genre of books that outline a particular problem in the leading title, which is then followed by its remedy in the subtitle, the self-help genre has also undergone substantial product diversification to include inspirational pamphlets, affirmational daily journals, audio books and miniature self-help books (e.g. The Little Book of Hope) to emerge as a very lucrative global cultural industry. While it is estimated that the self-help industry is worth $10 billion in America, this strong consumptive relationship with self-help books is not an exclusive American phenomenon, but can also be found to be on the increase in Britain, as well as Japan, China and India, among other countries. However, despite the sizeable presence of self-help books in contemporary popular culture, the practice of consuming and reading self-help books has yet to receive the scholarly attention that this phenomenon now deserves. In this article I will attempt to rectify this impasse by conducting a critical review of the research already conducted into self-help books and their readers, highlighting the inconsistencies and impediments that hamper a sustained and systematic analysis of self-help books, with a view to signposting new areas for development and a fusion of different perspectives in the years ahead.