Deborah Brody: Seeking a New Hook
Holt senior editor Deborah Brody gets right to the point on the topic of diet and health books. "We're looking for two things: something new and a credentialed author. Today doesn't want someone on who's not a doctor." Besides an author who's "credentialed and promotable," she says, "we want a new hook on something. There can be 100 back pain books out there, so we're looking for something that hasn't been said before or has a new twist."
The major trend on the horizon is the continuing dominance of the baby boomers, says Brody. "Arthritis is going to be huge," she predicts. "Our population is aging, and as all these baby boomers are getting older, they're going to be dealing with things like arthritis and back pain."
As for the diet field, she says that Holt, for the large part, is moving out of this business. "Diets are hard, and most of them don't work," she contends. "Whether it's high-protein, low-carb or vice versa, it's whatever's fashionable, whatever's trendy. You can see it if you just look at books published over the past 30 years." Brody thinks the diet niche is overpublished, "and they don't tend to be backlist books. We like to publish titles for the backlist, ones that can be revised." She points to titles like Elizabeth Somer's Nutrition for a Healthy Pregnancy (Owl), released in September in a revised edition, and her (also revised) Nutrition for Women (Owl), due in January.
"It's to our advantage to keep up-to-date," Brody says. "You look in a bookstore's health section, and there are at least five books on each subject. So how do you get yours to stand out? Being new is a huge benefit—if a consumer sees five books, four of them published in 1997 and one in 2002, he or she probably will pick the new one."
Although Brody estimates that 95% of the books she acquires are through agents, once in a while serendipity plays a role. "I suffer from sinusitis," she confides. "I went looking for a good book on the subject and didn't find one, so I commissioned one." The result is next month's Sinusitis Relief (Owl) by Harvey Plasse, M.D., and Shelagh Ryan Masline. Other books in the pipeline include, naturally enough, a work on arthritis, as well as a book on headaches by Ian Livingstone. "He runs the Princeton headache clinic," says Brody, who expects this subject will be "another big area." Beyond that, she's not sure what trends might be coming down the pike. "I wish I knew," she says. "Then I'd be publishing only bestselling books."
Jim Karas: Carrots Won't Make You Fat
"Eating, exercising and mind set are all important in a weight-loss program," says Jim Karas, whose Flip the Switch is coming next month from Harmony. "That third element is essential." Many problems thwarting Americans who want to drop pounds arise from chaotic theories muddling the field, he believes. "The health business is fragmented. We are overwhelmingly gimmicked. Unrealistic expectations encouraged by infomercials, supplements and books set people up to fail. After 20 years of bad behavior, no, you're not going to lose 10 pounds over a weekend, as some promise. One book says carrots will make you fat. Not so. And carbohydrates are not killers."
With his second book, the author of the bestselling The Business Plan for the Body (196,000 in print after 10 printings) aims to set forth a user-friendly regimen. "The last thing you want to do is beat down someone who's desperate," Karas says. "If you win people's trust, you gain adherence to a program."
Karas encourages dieters to plumb their emotional approach to food by completing such sentences as: "When I am eating, I feel…." He advocates less dependence on cardiovascular drills and more on strength and resistance training because lean muscle tissue burns more calories than fat. "Go into a health club's cardiovascular room, and you'll find it filled with overweight people. Go into the strength-training room, and the people there are more fit. In five years, cardiovascular therapy will be looked on as hormone therapy is now. It's not getting the job done."
By achieving a firm mental commitment to lose weight, one has "flipped the switch," he remarks, confessing that he knows whereof he speaks. "I spent the first 22 years of my life overweight. Dieting. Fasting. I did it all. I failed until I made a concentrated effort to change my relationship to food, to exercise, to my body. It is," he continues, "an ongoing struggle. I'm 41 and I have to work at it every day. People think that when you've lost the weight, you've accomplished it. No, then it's maintenance." This means policing portion control, counting calories and exercising as the book recommends.
Formerly a private portfolio manager out of the Wharton School of Business, Karas turned to the fitness business 13 years ago, became a personal trainer and began writing books because "I was disappointed by what I saw on bookshelves. Now I've helped thousands of people lose weight." These prize pupils include Diane Sawyer and Gayle King. Actually, anyone can invite Karas into the home for a week of intensive diet and fitness training. It costs $10,000. Perhaps the 75,000-copy first printing of Flip the Switch will get the job done for those on a tighter budget.
Diana Baroni: Not Going Gaga for Yoga
Diana Baroni, a senior editor at Warner Books who deals primarily with health and fitness titles, is looking for the next big diet book. "Atkins and the high-protein diets have stayed steady," she says, "but there's always room for a diet book to be a big success." One Warner diet book that has performed well is The pH Miracle by Robert Young, published in May and now in its seventh printing. "That worked because it was very different and because of the author and his profile," she reports. "He does seminars on a regular basis, he was on The Early Show, and he's constantly out there."
In fact, Baroni reports that a publicity-primed author is key to the success of any health or fitness title: "Often it's not enough to have a good topic. The author sells the book, both frontlist and backlist." Warner is especially interested in credentialed authors in this category, although authors need not always be physicians, as long as they are affiliated with some sort of institution, or possibly have their own newspaper or magazine column.
One group of books that Baroni oversees that does require physician authors is the What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About series, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies on topics ranging from circumcision to Parkinson's disease. Baroni reports that next year the series will acquire a new, uniform look beginning with the January paperback reprint of What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Breast Cancer by John Lee. The premise of the series, in Baroni's words, "is that each of the doctors has something different, maybe alternative, to say and they're looking into treatment for a disorder or disease that most conventional doctors don't know about and aren't using."
Baroni notes ironically that until recently she also considered menopause a topic about which there remained little left unwritten, but then in July a large-scale study was published that questioned the use of hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women. Partly as a result of the new information, the 1995 title, What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Menopause, has sold 80,000 copies this year. "Everyone is looking for alternatives to HRT since that study was published," she says, "and most conventional doctors don't have an answer for them."
There is one topic, however, that Baroni says she's definitely seen enough of: "I think the yoga marketplace is just becoming so overpublished. There are tons and tons of titles out there." And while she believes the health category will remain strong, she doesn't see any one trend leaping ahead of the pack. "In the past, issues like loss of libido and prostate cancer have risen above the rest," she says, "but now the demographic is staying the same."
Barbara Harris: Getting into Shape
Shape magazine gives its million-plus subscribers and half million newsstand buyers encouraging advice every month on how to lead a healthy, balanced life. Though physical activity is a cornerstone of the magazine's health program, it presents other elements, too—including a good diet, spirituality, adequate rest, emotional stability and a healthy body image. It's the "web of relationships" among these elements that makes for wellness, explains Barbara Harris, the magazine's editor-in-chief for the past 15 years and now the co-author (with Angela Hynes) of a book that offers the integrated wellness program put forth each month in the magazine. "The Shape brand is well known for its philosophy," says Harris, "Shape Your Life: 4 Weeks to a Better Body—and a Better Life [Hay House, Jan.] takes that philosophy into a different format."
Shape's holistic attitude—"the future of fitness," Harris says, describing it as a fertile area of research—has been evolving over the past decade and a half. "There's a wealth of data that leads to our approach, that shows a connection between mind, body and the immune system," she explains. "To improve any one area of your life, look at all the areas. This is a new, fresh approach for fitness and a new way to approach your life." While people still like to follow traditional exercise programs, she says, the Shape approach appeals to people who want to reduce stress. "It's a significant barrier if you're having problems at home and you don't want to exercise," she says. "We address that."
Harris, who has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, has been interested in body-mind interactions for years. Her belief is that interest in fitness will continue to grow as the national concern over health grows. "Recent events like September 11, the threats of terrorism and the sniper attacks spur us to look at quality-of-life issues, to take an interest in spirituality, to ask how can our lives can be more meaningful," Those who exercise regularly, she says, reframe fitness as a way of taking care of themselves.
In addition to Harris's 10-city tour, the Shape Your Life seminars started three years ago as one-day events in Texas will move into high gear in March, with programs planned at resorts all over the country.
Elaine Magee: Let's Hear It for Canned Broth
"I'm in the trenches," says Elaine Magee, 41-year-old author of the Career Press/New Page Tell Me What to Eat series. "I have two daughters and a husband and I know what it's like to deal with homework and dance classes. There's no way I'm spending two hours in the kitchen on a lasagna, and I'm not going to make chicken broth from scratch if I can buy it."
As a result of that pragmatic attitude, the 30-plus recipes that appear in each of the 150-page books in the series are dishes that real people can prepare. But Magee, who is a registered dietitian and holds a master's degree in public health nutrition from the University of California Berkeley, adheres to a simple credo: "Taste first. Healthy food isn't going to do anyone any good if no one's eating it."
Each of Magee's titles tackles a different chronic condition, then suggests the best diet for living with it. Magee considers her forte to be a down-to-earth manner and an ability to condense confusing scientific information. "I was sensing frustration out there with 300-page books full of terminology and a lecturing tone and written by doctors or researchers," she says. "I wanted to do a series that any person could get through in a night, that would give them a feeling that someone was walking them through it."
While Magee counts her layperson's point of view a plus, she does make good use of experts by having them contribute forewords and vet her books. Dr. Anthony A. Starpoli (director of the gastroesophageal reflux disease unit at St. Vincent's Hospital) did just that for Tell Me What to Eat if I Have Acid Reflux (Jan. 2002).
That title is the sixth in a series that began in 1999 with Tell Me What to Eat As I Approach Menopause. The bestseller in the bunch is still the 1999 title Tell Me What to Eat if I Have Diabetes. "People who have type II diabetes also tend to be overweight," Magee reports, "so they get hit from a lot of different directions. I think they like the feeling that when they read the book I'm holding their hands."
Magee's reach is broader than just this series: she's the author of more than 20 books on cooking and nutrition and writes "The Recipe Doctor" column, syndicated through Knight Ridder Tribune Information Services. She also has her own Web site, www.recipedoctor.com, as well as serving as a nutrition expert for the WebMD site. Magee's next project is The Flax Cookbook (Marlowe & Company, Jan.) on a recently identified nutritional powerhouse, flaxseed. Says Magee, "It's a cookbook, but it also reviews the scientific evidence on the effect of flaxseed on everything from breast pain to heart disease and cancer, which is mind-boggling."
Marnie Cochran: Pregnant with Meaning
"We're being very aggressive about the Your Pregnancy series by Glade B. Curtis, M.D., and Judith Schuler," says Perseus senior editor Marnie Cochran, who views the series as a model for the publisher's other health titles. "The tagline, 'only a doctor's advice will do,' " she says. "has sold a lot of books. That's the m.o. of a lot of our books. People want authority and real information, and a name they can trust."
"Since buying Fisher Books [which originated the series], the Your Pregnancy books have consistently been our bestselling health series, with Your Pregnancy Week by Week selling more than a quarter of a million copies a year," says Cochran. "All told, the series has sold well into the millions." In the two years that Perseus has had the series, it has added three new books, including one addressed to the person frequently overlooked in the process—Your Pregnancy for the Father-to-Be: Everything You Need to Know About Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Getting Ready for Your New Baby will launch in March with a 75,000-copy first printing. For Cochran, what makes this book special is that it takes the father's role seriously and invites dads-to-be to get involved in their own form of nesting, such as ensuring that the new baby will be financially provided for.
In today's market, "it's very hard to be original," opines Cochran. "The trend in our publishing program is to find those pockets, or niche markets, that no one publishes into yet or publishes into well." She points to Joanne Hilden, M.D., and Daniel R. Tonib, M.D.'s Shelter from the Storm: Caring for a Child with a Life-Threatening Condition (Feb.) as an example of a needed book that hadn't been available before. Although she doesn't have a terminally ill child herself, for Cochran this book is personal—she couldn't find anything like it for a friend.
"In the world of acquisitions, so often an editor has a personal link," says Cochran. Another factor that goes into health book acquisitions is building on the house's strength. At Perseus, many of the bread-and-butter titles are symptom- and disease-specific, like the third edition of Sheldon Marks, M.D.'s Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival (Feb.) and Henry Lerner, M.D.'s Miscarriage: Why It Happens and How Best to Reduce Your Risks (Mar.), with Alice Domar. "Those kinds of issues always have support groups, from national organizations to online chat groups. It's not the sexiest area of the bookstore, but it is solid."
Phyllis A. Balch: Pioneering Nutritional Healing
During the 1970s, Phyllis A. Balch embraced nutritional healing with a sense of mission mixed with exasperation. "I was going through menopause at the time and was suffering severe depression and hot flashes," recalls the author of the forthcoming revised edition of Prescription for Dietary Wellness (Avery, Feb.), first published in 1998. "Doctors kept telling me the problem was 'in my head,' but I knew there was something going on with my body. Nutrition really became key to me."
If vindication were required, Balch received it in spades. Her first book, self-published with her then-husband, James F. Balch, M.D., as Nutritional Outline for the Professional and the Wise Man in 1983, was later christened Prescription for Nutritional Healing when picked up by Avery in 1990. Currently in its third edition, the work has sold more than five million copies. Balch's Prescription for Herbal Healing, published last January, has sold more than 100,000 copies.
The author is indebted, she says, to the pioneering naturopath, Paavo Airola, whose How to Get Well changed her life back in the '70s—"I read his book, contacted him and began attending his seminars and lectures." After taking a correspondence course, Balch received certification from the American Association of Nutritional Consultants. She tells PW, "I felt that there was something missing in the traditional approach to medicine, which treats the symptoms rather than the illness, and decided that health food stores and the general public needed nutritional information. I really came to the field because I saw firsthand how diet and nutrition could be a powerful remedy for illness."
In 1980, Balch opened a health food store, Good Things Naturally, in Greenfield, Ind., which is still open today. After that, she says, "I became a recluse for 10 to 12 years to write my first book." She continues to revise her work, she says, "based on the many new supplements and studies that reach the market every day."
Balch admits that the publishing world has not always regarded her chosen field highly. "Ten years ago many publishers were afraid of or didn't believe in nutritional healing. This has all changed. It became an issue of public demand. People are beginning to realize that they, not just their doctors, are responsible for their own health and well-being. More and more people are starting to turn to supplements and herbs, as well as their own diet, in an effort to maintain optimal health. This is what I have been writing about for more than 20 years, so it goes right along with what I've been thinking for quite a while."
Matt Roberts: Fitness Across the Pond
The British, says Matt Roberts, are obsessed with their arms; Americans, with their abs. It's all a matter of climate, explains the U.K.'s leading fitness guru. While Yanks are influenced by the "body-baring climate of Southern California," it's rarely hot enough in the U.K. to sport a crop top. But there are plenty of days balmy enough to pull on a T-shirt and show off a pair of buff triceps.
But Roberts has managed to find the common fitness ground between the nations and build a solid reputation in both with bestselling books and celebrity clients that range from supermodel Naomi Campbell and Sting to members of the Swedish royal family.
A former international caliber sprinter, Roberts was a mere lad of 22 when he opened Great Britain's first personal training center in London's posh Mayfair section. Eight years later, in addition to Matt Roberts Personal Training in London, he has two centers on Mauritius and plans in the works to expand into the New York City market.
His first book, Matt Roberts 90-Day Fitness, was published in 2001 by DK and was followed earlier this year with Matt Roberts Fitness for Life. Each title sold over 80,000 copies in the U.K. and, in the author's words, "very strongly" in the U.S. Matt Roberts Fat Loss Plan is due next month. "It's very strict," notes an unapologetic Roberts, "but if you follow the program to the letter, I promise you'll lose body fat."
When it comes to fitness books, says Roberts, those in the U.K. "are less explanatory. Americans want an emphasis on why and how; Brits just want to go straight to the program." He attributes his trans-Atlantic success to "the look of the books. They have simple designs with lots of color and get to the core of what a reader needs to know. And we use real people in our photos, not stick figure models, but people whose bodies are attainable."
Up next for Roberts is a series of four "mini-books" that focus on toning up specific body parts. As for the next fitness craze, Roberts sees us "getting out of the gym to go for a run in the hills or a swim in a lake—we'll all be working out in nature."
Heather Jackson: An Appetite for Diet Books
"I like to do books that are appetizing and fun," says Heather Jackson, senior editor at St. Martin's, whose books include The Peanut Butter Diet and The Ice Cream Diet.
Although Jackson concedes that "diet books are probably overpublished," she doesn't see sales diminishing anytime soon. "America's love affair with food and the need to shrink down isn't going away. The more we diet the more we obsess about food. People are always concerned about their health and well-being."
Given the increasing competition among diet books over the past five years, Jackson is careful when it comes to selecting books and authors. "You want authors with terrific credentials in their field," she explains. "You want to find a new approach or a new way of thinking. I'm looking for something that has novelty, but mainstream appeal. You want something that can be sold as frontlist or backlist. There's so much media saturation, you have to have all three: credentials, novelty of subject and quality of the work."
Jackson's biggest author to meet those criteria is Robert Atkins, whose controversial approach to dieting involves ignoring the food pyramid and eating high-fat, low-carb foods. With an assist from the publicity surrounding this fall's New York Times Magazine article on the Atkins plan, Dr. Atkins' Age Defying Diet, due out in trade paperback in May, has over a million copies in print. His forthcoming hardcover, Atkins for Life: The Complete Controlled Carb Program for Permanent Weight Loss and Good Health (Mar.), will weigh in with a 250,000-copy first printing. "I'm particularly excited about Atkins for Life because the biggest complaint I've heard about the Atkins diet is people don't know what to do after a few weeks. We set out to prove that you could eat ethnic foods, that you could navigate the holidays, that you could go to restaurants and stay on this plan."
For those looking for a personalized approach, Jackson recommends Dr. Robert Kushner's Personality Type Diet (Jan.) by Robert Kushner of Northwest Memorial Institute. His craft-your-own approach is also one of the latest trends in the diet category, according to Jackson. "The book relates to what you'll experience on a daily basis. People use food in many ways. If you don't address the whole person, it won't work," says Jackson, who prefers to adapt bits and pieces from different plans to craft her own diet.
Gina Kolata: Spinning into Control
New York Times science writer Gina Kolata terms the fitness field "a funny one" filled with enthusiasts, hucksters and marketers who are under no obligation to offer objective proof that their methods work. "Anyone who looks good or has enthusiasm can say it's because of this wonderful program they're following," she says. "You have to ask, What counts as evidence in this world? I think I get why people exercise and what they get from it. But it's hard to figure out what to believe."
Kolata's book, Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth About Exercise and Health (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May) is not about getting fit per se but about the world of exercise and fitness, its history, myths and countermyths. "When you ask people why they exercise," says Kolata, "they almost always say it's because it makes them feel so good, or because they like the feeling of having control over their body, not because it makes their heart better. The book explains how, for health, you don't have to do very much."
An ardent spinner, Kolata was led into the subject by her own mania and the sense she got while training for a four-hour spin that she finally understood what drives weightlifters, bodybuilders and others who push their bodies to the limits in what she terms "an alternate world." Her story in the New York Times about spin training stirred considerable reader interest. Convinced she had found a subject with broad appeal, she moved ahead to investigate every aspect of the fitness field.
"There's lots of products and claims and marketing out there but not a lot of science," she says. "People expect more of programs and products than they can ever deliver." As a science and medical writer, Kolata looks for big issues that have changed society. Fitness, she says, definitely falls into this category: "The fitness boom has changed our culture. Whether or not we exercise, it's changed our expectations of what a healthy person is."
Tami Booth: Proclaiming the New Yoga
When J.I. Rodale founded his publishing company in 1930, his focus on organic foods and an interest in nutrition and its effect on health—as a result of his father's early death due to heart disease—were unusual, to say the least. More than 70 years later, Rodale publishes about 100 books a year and still concentrates on health and nutrition. "Today the field is very crowded," says editor-in-chief Tami Booth. "Back then, we were ahead of the curve and now we're one of many great health publishers."
In addition to publishing unaffiliated titles, Rodale also publishes books associated with three of the publisher's nine magazines: Men's Health, Prevention and Organic Style. According to Booth, the synergy definitely works—"We can see the bumps in sales of the books when we do excerpts in the magazines. It's extremely effective."
That synergy is applied when Rodale decides to build a franchise around an individual author. By way of example, Booth cites Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss and other books by Howard Shapiro (Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss 30-Day Plan and Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss Shopper's Guide, with Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Cookbook due in January). Booth tells PW, "We featured each of his books at launch, but then again periodically throughout the year, so there has not been a month since April 2000, when the first book was published, that we have not promoted him. He's had 30-plus national media appearances over the last two years." Shapiro's three current titles combined have more than 1,000,000 copies in print.
Also in the diet realm, Booth expects strong sales for an April title, The South Beach Diet by Arthur Agatston, M.D. "He's a Miami cardiologist who couldn't find a diet he felt comfortable recommending to his patients, so he did a systematic review of diets and created what he defines as the best of all worlds," says Booth.
Agatston is a good example of Rodale's tendency to sign authors with some previous exposure or, as Booth says, "In the best-case scenario, an author will bring his or her own following." Denise Austin's two Lifetime network TV shows garner about a million viewers daily; three months ago Rodale published her first book, Pilates for Every Body. Booth does feel, however, that the Pilates field is filling up quickly. "When we decided to publish Denise's book there were only three or four books on the subject, and when it came out there were 30 or so. Pilates is on the verge of going mainstream. It's where yoga was a couple of years ago."
