People underestimate the lifespan of trends,” says Mitch Horowitz, editor-in-chief of Penguin's Tarcher imprint. “The Secret will be around for some time to come. This is the most significant reintroduction of ideas about spirituality and prosperity in 50 years.”
Hay House CEO Reid Tracy says his company has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of Jerry and Esther Hicks's law-of-attraction-related titles as a direct result of The Secret. The publisher releases the Hickses' new book, The Astonishing Power of Emotions, this week with a 150,000 first printing. “People are definitely searching out other stuff after The Secret and it benefits the whole category,” Tracy says.
Jo Ann Deck, publisher at Crossing Press/Celestial Arts, agrees. “The Secret has revitalized the New Age base. I expect to see many more books on this subject.”
Readers' fascination with these titles should come as no surprise, says Sterling president and CEO Charles Nurnberg. “These ideas have been around for a long time. They're drawing in new readers, but people have always been interested in this topic,” he says. “The Secret has been done a hundred times.”
Emerging Interest in Existing Topics
While none of those earlier books took off into the popular culture stratosphere like The Secret, the surge of interest in the topic has benefited them, too.
Tarcher's Success Classics line began before The Secret, but saw demand spike in titles such as Wallace D. Wattles's The Science of Getting Rich—written in 1910—after The Secret broke out. Despite being in the public domain—it's available for download online and has competing editions from other publishers—Tarcher has 50,000 copies of Wattles's book in print. This fall the publisher will add three new books to the series: Charles Haanel's The Master Key System, Wattles's The Science of Being Great and Robert Collier's The Secret of the Ages. It will also release The Prosperity Bible in November, a boxed set of landmark writings on the topic just in time for the holidays.
Rob Meadows, v-p of sales and marketing at Inner Traditions, believes that the renaissance in interest in older titles and traditions signals why it's important for the category to take a long view.
“What seems to be an emerging topic is more accurately an emerging interest in an existing topic,” says Meadows. “In other words, it has all been done before, usually more thoroughly and freely than now, and our mission is to keep alive and preserve endangered or lost or suppressed traditional practices.”
Nearly everyone agrees the nature of publishing in this category is cyclical and that the hot “new” ideas driving sales have come around before.
“The challenge is for publishers to retain these readers by enticing them with new material that will help them take the next step in their own process,” says Munro Magruder, associate publisher at New World Library. He hopes that readers will be seeking books like Marc Allen's The Greatest Secret of All (Jan., 2008), which he says places a greater emphasis on how readers can attract emotional health. The book will have a first printing of 25,000 copies.
However, some project that the trend will ultimately evolve toward more selfless concerns, citing a backlash in spiritual quarters that view The Secret phenomenon as too centered on personal gain.
Red Wheel/Weiser publisher Jan Johnson says, “I've turned down a lot of manuscripts that billed themselves as 'like The Secret.' Manifesting material objects is not about the greater good.”
Kelly Notaras, editorial director at Sounds True, agrees. “I believe the cream will rise to the top—teachers will take what the world has now learned about the power of manifestation and use that as a basis to guide readers deeper, toward practices that bear the fruits of generosity and compassion.”
Once a secret gets out, it usually becomes old news. So perhaps the most surprising thing about the blockbuster success of Rhonda Byrne's The Secret may be that it keeps getting sold, then sold and sold again. The Secret passed the bona fide publishing phenomenon mark a few million copies ago, right around the time Oprah raved about it. But it's not just The Secret that's selling. Readers are snapping up other books that explore similar concepts of how people can use “intention” and thoughts to attract prosperity and happiness.
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