How the Economy Affects Trends in Self-Help Books

I’ve been ghostwriting and editing non-fiction books and novels since late 2007. As you’ll recall, that was the beginning of the Great Recession. It lingered for years, wreaking havoc on our national economy and way of life. The US gross domestic product fell by 4.3 percent, making it the deepest recession since World War II. The GDP decline wasn't reversed until more than three years after the calamity first entered our lives.

The unemployment rate more than doubled, soaring to 10 percent in October 2009. Home prices plummeted roughly 30 percent and foreclosures were rampant. Retirement funds took a hit as the S&P 500 index fell by 57 percent between 2007 and 2009, and didn’t fully recover until 2013.

What a time to launch a business as a sole proprietor!

Luckily I found clients, and I ghostwrote a lot of books on one subject in particular: How to get a job. I wrote books on how to prepare for a job interview, how to dress for success, how to network. I wrote one about how to get a job teaching English in South Korea. There was another about how to learn public speaking.

Some career books taught readers how to ditch their horrible jobs and make money on the internet. I ghostwrote and edited books on how to retire and structure your financial portfolio for lasting income. More than one book revealed how to buy a sailboat and cruise around the Caribbean for nine months out of the year, taking refuge on land only during hurricane season.

There was another self-help category that (sadly) was very big: How to avoid foreclosure on your house, and how to take advantage of Federal programs to ease the process. Millions of homes were under foreclosure and real estate agents wanted to write these books to enhance their professional standing. On the flip side, I wrote books about how to invest in distressed and foreclosed properties. One person’s disaster could become an opportunity for someone else.

The Shift to Success Books

As the economy improved and the unemployment rate fell to historic lows by 2019, I was no longer asked to write books on how to get a job or how to avoid foreclosure. The market for such books had dried up because everyone had a job and the housing market had recovered. The market shifted to books about leadership and how to manage employees. I wrote books about scrum and lean manufacturing, and employee harassment, and how to communicate effectively. A consistent topic has been innovation, and how to make it a vital part of your company’s everyday activities.

This trend has continued to this day. The focus is on how to be happy at work, how to lower your stress on the job, and how to climb the ladder of success. How to become influential, both in your industry and in your community, is another popular subject.

Medical and health books are consistently in demand. I recently ghostwrote a book that shows you how to start a program of intermittent fasting. I’ve been asked to write books about the Paleo diet and other diets that help you become, and stay, more healthy. Chronic pain and lifestyle diseases are big self-help topics, as well as stress and depression.

A new subject is artificial intelligence. In the past two years I’ve ghostwritten several books about the use of AI in the healthcare industry and for the delivery of government services. These books are challenging because they can quickly become dated!

About ten percent of my business is fiction ghostwriting. More people than you might imagine want to put their name on a novel and are happy to pay me to write it for them. They’re mostly thrillers, but one of my favorite projects was ghostwriting a 90,000-word historical novel that traced three generations of a family during the 20th century, from Paris to Boston to Los Angeles.

Artificial Intelligence Enters the Scene

I’m not feeling any competition from ChatGPT and other tools that allow people to quickly and cheaply write something they can call a “book.” I see many job listings on sites like Upwork placed by people who want a 30,000-word self-help book written for $500 or less. My instinct tells me that these people wouldn’t have been my clients anyway, and that they represent an expansion of the marketplace into new people who see a new opportunity. The serious clients who would hire me to write their manuscript are still there, and they’re not interested in putting their name on a generic, boring book that no one will read. And they also know a secret: Once you put a book up for sale on Amazon, and it has an ISBN number, it never goes away. So if you publish a cheap and quick Chat GPT book just to have your name out there, you’re going to be stuck with it forever, even after you come to your senses and take it off the market. It will be marked “out of print,” but it will linger there like an unwelcome houseguest.

Publishing on Amazon is forever. When you take your shot, make sure it’s your very best!

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