This book is not the answer.” So opens Wellington clinical psychologist Ben Sedley’s third book (or fourth, if you count his PhD thesis), Holding the Heavy Stuff, launched in early August at Wellington’s Unity Books.
I quite like that opening, though the same may not be true for anyone who opens it hoping to see, “This book is the answer”. I’ll come back to this in a tick.
The self-help genre focuses on providing (hopefully) practical guidance to people seeking to improve themselves and solve personal challenges. And it’s big business. In his introduction, Ben says there are more than 100,000 self-help books already available.
When I went on to Amazon and searched for “self-help books” it gave me 48 pages of exemplars drawn “from over 100,000 results”. To put this in context, I also searched for “cookery books”, and that gave me only 16 pages drawn from 90,000 results.
It didn’t used to be this way; the tipping point came in the past 20 years.
It’s eye-opening to look at the current non-fiction bestsellers. Top of the heap as I write is The Let Them Theory: A life-changing tool that millions of people can’t stop talking about. Intriguing, how does this book know so many people are talking about it? Good old psychology provocateur Jonathan Haidt comes in at No 3 with The Anxious Generation, followed by frequent visitor to New Zealand Bessel van de Kolk and his The Body Keeps the Score. The Psychology of Money (timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness by an economist and financial journalist) is fifth. And Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is No 10. Apparently, this is one of the best-selling self-help books of all time, but it was first published in 1937.
As a researcher and practitioner, I’m concerned that only two of the top 10 books are authored by people with a background in helping people. Clearly, I’m using too narrow a definition of “help”.
So, the answer to the question, “What makes a successful self-help bestseller?” is to be a lawyer, economist or celebrity. Telling folk how to make money obviously doesn’t hurt, either.
Fortunately, given the number of self-help books available, research can inform our answer to the question “what makes an effective self-help bestseller?” One part of that answer is to not oversell your product. Don’t tell your reader this is the answer if there’s any chance it might not be. Good sources tend to acknowledge limitations, explain that setbacks are normal, and provide guidance on how to deal with them.
Research also says people tend to find books by people with clear expertise are more effective. There are two parts to this: we pay more attention to what someone says if they have obvious credibility (they’re a psychologist telling us about how to deal with heavy stuff), but people with relevant expertise also tend to know what stuff is effective. Additionally, a therapeutic and empathic tone that connects with the reader is identified as valuable.
Effective self-help is also evidence-based, and studies show that slightly less than half of the books in the genre are backed by evidence. In the context of psychological self-help, this typically means guidance based on validated therapeutic approaches like cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, or in Ben’s case, acceptance and commitment therapy, are more likely to be more helpful than just a psychological placebo effect.
The most effective resources are also active, interactive and guided. They give concrete examples and describe practical exercises. They give us tools that we can try on for size (not everyone gets relief from a grounding exercise).
I should also say that I’m not pushing Ben’s book, though he did give me a copy. I also enjoyed a glass of wine at the launch.
