Letters to the Editor
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An addictive substance
I'm a ghostwriter. I write self-help books, including some for some of the bigger names in the niche. I do it because it's interesting, pays well and gives me a chance to write, which is what I love. But the industry is still largely selling a legal version of crack cocaine to a largely impressionable, naive and self-deluding audience.
I've had this discussion with some top self-help gurus and they cynically laugh about the "addiction" aspect of the self-help process. They know it's true and they profit hugely off it. It goes something like this:
1. Person reads self-help book.
2. Reader attends seminar, where she (there are more women than men) is sold thousands of dollars worth of tapes, CD sets, boot camps, etc. and pumped full of positive, can-do messages.
3. Person gets a huge buzz and feels like she is actually making substantial changes in her life simply by ATTENDING the event and BUYING stuff.
4. Person goes home. The buzz fades. The books and CDs collect dust on a shelf. Because most self-help programs are filled with glib, shallow advice and programs and little encouragement to become self-aware and face the fact that change is HARD, few consumers of this stuff make substantive changes in their lives.
5. Person wants to get that purposeful buzz back, so she buys the author's next book, goes to another seminar, attends a boot camp, pays $5,000 for coaching or a teleseminar, and so on. Buzz returns. She feels great for a few weeks more.
6. Repeat.
7. Self-help guru laughs all the way to the bank and never has to prove the effectiveness of his or her ideas because maybe 10% of the people who buy into them ever take any action at all.
This is a bit of an oversimplification, but not by much. As Niesslein found out, so much of the ideas in this subculture are facile, shallow and pretty lame. There are some good self-help figures out there, but I'd say they're maybe a 20% minority. The rest are all about getting 'em hooked and getting the check.