Steve Salerno is a reporter with wide experience. As a freelance feature writer, Salerno has written for magazines including Harper's, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and many others. He has contributed articles to the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. Many of his articles have focused upon "money stories," that deal with financial scandals and controversies in the business world. Now, he is ready to report on the biggest scandal he has ever encountered--America's self-help movement.
Salerno writes: "In twenty-four years as a business writer and an investigative journalist, I have covered all kinds of 'money stories.' I have written about boondoggles on bankers' row and sleight of hand at Seventh Avenue fashion houses. I've written about the gyrations of the stock market as well as the myriad forces that surround, yet never quite explain, investing itself. I've written about money as it relates to sales, money as it relates to sports, money as it relates to music, money as it relates to love. It's safe to say that if it involves money, combined with some form of human aspiration, I've probably written about it."
Nevertheless, Salerno's experience in reporting still left him amazed when he confronted an industry whose story "represents the ultimate marriage of money and aspiration." That story is the rise and dominance of what he calls the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"--identified in his book by the acronym SHAM.
America's SHAM empire includes an army of therapists, authors, motivational speakers and "corporate coaches," all ready to offer help, encouragement, motivation, correction, and assurance--for a price.
Salerno knows big money when he sees it. The SHAM industry is big business. Self-help books are never far from the best-seller list, and the products, conferences, and services of self-help gurus come at considerable cost. The top speakers earn more than ten million dollars per year, and the self-help sector of the economy is growing by leaps and bounds.
There's a good reason for that, Salerno explains. Self-help business is repeat business. The self-help industry would go out of business if its books and products actually solved the problems--real or perceived--that led customers to buy the products in the first place.
Of course, comedians are quick to jump on the oxymoron that lies at the very heart of the industry. If people could genuinely help themselves, they wouldn't need the self-help movement. As comedian George Carlin has quipped: "If you're reading it in a book, folks, it ain't self-help. It's help."
No matter what it is called, the self-help movement is big business and a growth industry. Last year, Publishers Weekly reported, "Self-help books are a Teflon category for many booksellers. No matter the economy or current events, the demand is constant."
The repeat business is often no accident. Salerno served for some time as editor of the books program associated with the magazine, Men's Health. Part of the giant Rodale publishing empire, Men's Health offered a book service directed towards male customers. The company conducted surveys in order to identify "the customers' worst fears and chronic problems," which then became fodder for future books and products. The secret behind the program's success was, Salerno reports, the fact that many customers could be enticed to buy yet more books on self-help within eighteen months.
Depending on how one defines the category, publishers release thousands of new self-help books each year. Some of these books make their way to the very top of the best-seller list--and stay there for months or years. But the market for self-help books and products is not limited to mainstream bookstores. Salerno reports that such products are staples of the more than 5000 New Age bookstores now found in the United States. In reality, much of the energy behind the New Age phenomenon has now been refocused into SHAM with New Age consultants and coaches now ready to talk about profits and marketshare rather than meditation and channeling.
