It’s a known fact that everyone in America is recovering from some-thing-bulimia, workaholism, childhood. Nearly all of us are ex-somethings. But thanks to the availability of support groups in every hamlet and trailer park in the land, few of us are forced to go it alone. And now, for those anxious moments when your support group is on vacation, there is a new variety of bedside bucker-uppers called affirmation books. “Affies,” as they are known for short, have become hot tickets in the recovery field and something of a publishing phenomenon. With these handy little happiness dispensers, you need never be far from an encouraging word. Heaps of them are turning up in bookstores, right next to the checkout counter, or on special dependency and recovery racks. (Turn left at personal growth.) Priced from $5.95 to $9.95, the pastel-colored volumes are jumping off the shelves. With some titles selling upwards of 300,000 copies, publishers say they constitute the second biggest market in the country-second only to the Bible. “It’s almost like a religious revival,” crows Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s Books in Berkeley, Calif., where affies are among the top sellers.
The books are just a little bigger than bite size and seem to come in flavors. But they are meant to be read, not eaten. Think of them as one-a-day vitamins for the spirit. They offer homilies and pep talks for each day of the year, for all the problems made famous by support groups. Pages usually begin with a theme for the day (“Today, my inner child bubbles”); or else, an inspirational quote from thinkers like Blaise Pascal, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Andy Rooney. One popular book, “Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much,” manages to quote Mother Teresa, Rebecca West and Mae West. Not to mention Dolly Parton: “I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.” The books fairly bulge with such uplift. One uplifted user is Rosemary Phillips, a 41-year-old Manhattan secretary, who regularly scans the recovery racks at B. Dalton for the latest in affirmation. “I used to read the newspaper on the way to work,” says Phillips, “but I would get the feeling, ‘Ugh,’ because of the bad news. So I started reading these. It’s reading positive stuff instead of negative things. They help with my attitude.”
People who analyze these things say the popularity of the little pink and orange volumes may be due to the sagging economy, the breakup of Eastern Europe or even the collapse of communism. In other words, we’re all a little shaky. “We’re living in a time of catastrophic change,” says Cheryl Woodruff, senior editor at Ballantine Books, which sells a line of affies in supermarkets. “People need to center and ground themselves on a daily basis.” (“Nobody in this world is more secure than a man in a penitentiary."-Harvey S. Firestone Jr.) The buyers appear to be mainly women, of the better-educated sort. “They are the group that would be more inclined to watch PBS than Roseanne,” says Gary Seidler, vice president of Health Communications, Inc., a Deerfield Beach, Fla., firm that has published 12 affirmation books since 1985.
Some psychiatrists really see a use for the books-provided they don’t substitute for psychiatry. “The bottom line is, today we have to be flexible,” says Dr. Sharman Allen, an addiction medicine specialist in Delray Beach, Fla. “There are a lot of things in the bookstores not coming from professional psychotherapists that people can use in a positive way … A lot of people can’t sit and think of anything affirmative by themselves.” (“Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” Toni Morrison) Others feel the books are merely riding the coattails of the recovery fad. Often, they have the same congregations as recovery groups. “There’s an army of people in this country who in one form are in a 12-step program of some type or other,” says Maureen O’Brien, an associate editor at Publishers Weekly. “I think affirmation is part of that.”
Affirmation books, in fact, began as spin-offs of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book” and other 12-step literature. Publishers like Minnesota’s Hazelden Foundation began selling them regularly in the early 1980s. In 1986, Hazelden licensed Harper San Francisco to market its affies in mainstream bookstores. Booksellers weren’t very inspired at first. (“Inspiration comes very slowly. “-Brenda Ueland) But in 1987 the recovery field got its first mass-market best seller (2 million copies sold to date) with “Codependent No More,” a book by an ex-drug addict named Melody Beattie. And while Beattie’s tome was more strictly in the “how to” mode, it suggested there were profits to be reaped from other manuals of clean living. Publishers promptly took the books mainstream, tricking them up with pretty covers and hiring relatively seasoned authors like Beattie and Anne Wilson Schaef to write them. Schaef’s “Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much,” with 275,000 copies in the year ended this June, has made bundles of money for Harper San Francisco, where affies now account for a third of profits.
Since then other major publishers like Ballantine and Bantam have jumped on the gravywagon with affies of their own. But one of the field’s most successful operatives is the little-known Health Communications, which has produced nine big sellers, including “Affirmations for the Inner Child” and “Time for Joy,” by Ruth Fishel. Vice president Seidler claims all his authors are qualified therapists and counselors, though their qualifications sometimes seem a little offbeat.
Although sales seem better than ever this year, they may be nearing saturation. (“Sept. 12… ‘I have had enough’. “Golda Meir) And some booksellers complain the books are becoming as specialized as greeting cards. “They’re the type of books that would be perfect for Hallmark-affirmation for one-legged grandfathers with too many children,” says Ed Morrow Jr., chairman of the executive committee of the American Booksellers Association. Actually, there are no books for grandfathers, but there is one for children, the first in the field. Released just last month by Free Spirit Publishing in Minneapolis, and called “Making the Most of Today,” it quotes upbeat messages from Mahatma Gandhi, Billy Joel and Popeye, (“Honesty is the best policy and spinach is the best vegetable.”)
Yet if this be frivolity, some therapists say, frivol on. The books, they argue, are at least relentlessly healthy-minded and, at worst, harmless. “It’s not as though you’re saying ‘Today I’m going to be an ax murderer,”’ says Los Angeles-based psychologist Marilyn Mehr. “These are all positive things. If nobody else is stroking you, stroke yourself. Why not?”
Why not, indeed?
Sept. 13: Today, our sinuses clear, our inner child giggles; our outer child heads for the nearest sushi bar. -“Affirmations for Writers Recovering From Overexposure to Affirmation Books,”
Everybody’s done too much of something, which is why affirmation books are big sellers. Here’s what they’re buying this year.
TITLE COPIES SOLD 1/91 TO PRESENT Twenty-Four Hours a Day 200,157 Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much 199,713 The Language of Letting Go 123,393 Each Day a New Beginning 91,590 Laugh! I Thought I’d Die (If I Didn’t): Daily Meditations on Healing Through Humor 60,000 The Woman’s Book of Courage: Meditations for Empowerment and Peace of Mind 52,000 Touchstones 51,470 A Time To Be Free 42,000 Day By Day Love Is a Choice 40,000 Keep It Simple 37,736 SOURCES: BALLANTINE BOOKS; BANTAM BOOKS; CONARI PRESS; HARPER SAN FRANCISCO; HAZELDEN FOUNDATION; THOMAS NELSON COMMUNICATIONS THE FIGURES REFLECT DIRECT AND MAIL-ORDER SALES.
