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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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The genre is much older than this. The market is huge (something like 10-15 billion $USD) with about 50k different self help titles being published every year. Obviously no bookstore is going to stock 50k different self help titles (except maybe Amazon). But much of this market is served by special interest bookstores, like religious bookstores attached to churches or whatever. And those have existed forever!
I'm old enough to remember the 1980s and the parenting advice books that told my parents to beat me with a wooden spoon -- that they purchased from their church. It biases me against the genre somewhat ;)
Self help books tend to be part of a radicalization pipeline, where the authors are considered "experts" because they have a published book. Once you're in the pipeline, like youtube conspiracy videos, eventually you'll end up buying into antivaxx and other woo.