Why the Self-Help Industry Is Dominating the U.S.
A brief history of self-improvement
I’ve always been skeptical about self-help and not just because positive self-talk makes me cringe. It’s also not about the online degrees in life coaching I discovered as I typed this article. Mostly, I just never really knew what “self-help” meant. My confusion is perhaps best explained by the late comic George Carlin:
If you’re looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else? That’s not self-help. That’s help! There’s no such a thing as self-help. If you did it yourself, you didn’t need help.
I’ve always thought the term “self-help” was a bit vague. It seemed like a catch-all term for a genre of books that taught “personal development and improvement.” But my own skepticism aside, self-help has turned a book genre into an industry. Now, business is booming: In 2016, the U.S. self-help industry was worth about $9.9 billion dollars, according to a report from Research and Markets. Market researchers have predicted that the industry will be worth $13 billion dollars within the next four years, by 2022.
Today, the self-help industry has a peg in almost every medium available. While books were the main facet of self-help throughout most of history, today’s self-help blogs and TV shows have taken the…
