Jon Samsel

One of the most popular book categories is the self-help book. The range it covers is wide from a “teach yourself” series, on a variety of subjects, to books on achieving more success, money, skills, and a happier lifestyle. This category covers many subjects.
 
Millions of readers out there want help––all kinds of it. Life may have them uptight in one way or another. Or maybe they just haven’t found the help they expected from magazines, newspapers, television, their doctors, lawyers, parents, ministers, the government, or other sources.
 
The help they are seeking may be in a book on how to raise their children, how to guide them through the dangerous teen years, and how to pay the bill for their children’s college education.
 
Maybe they want to lose weight, find a better doctor, plan a more exciting vacation, learn a new skill, develop a hobby, insulate their home, prevent a possible heart attack, or plan and give a speech.

There are a lot more potential subjects for a self-help book. The point of this type of book is that it offers practical help to the reader and gives specific information.
 
How To Know If You’re Really In Love is a how-to title. But it’s also a self-help book. Some titles bridge both categories.
 
Some authors in this category build impressive lists of published titles, and you may well find your own niche with this type of book.
 
A glance at the book titles on Amazon.com shows that self-help books are selling well. Like other categories, sales of this type of book can go through cycles and peak at times yet fall off at other periods. One thing is certain. The companies selling such books would not continue to publish and promote them if sales were not good.

Why You Might Try Writing a Self-Help Book

A case can be made for writing almost any kind of book. To help you decide if ‘Self Help’ is the right category for you, you should consider the following:

1. You have a real interest in one or more self-help subjects.
2. You have special knowledge, training, or experience in some area which can be applied to a self-help book.
3. You enjoy helping others or would like to believe that a book you write might help at least a number of readers.
4. You have access to the information needed for a book of this kind.
5. The research needed for a book offering self-help seems interesting to you.
6. You have developed a plan that has proven of some help to you, and you believe others could profit from it too.
7. You already blog or tweet about a certain subject already––and writing a self-help book would be a logical next step.

If none of the above suggestions seem to strike a chord within you, it does not mean the self-help book is outside your ball park. The suggestions are meant to be a list of clues to consider as a potential self-help author.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.