Names Like Chicken Noodle Soup for the Teenage Soul
The New Yorker, October 6, 2003 P. 68
ANNALS OF PUBLISHING about the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series of books... In the fall of 1991 a young literary agent named Jeffrey Herman was trying to find a publisher for an ambitious package containing a lengthy manuscript sample and a lot of exuberant marketing ideas. When more than thirty publishers had passed on it he called the co-authors to tell them he was giving up. Writer tells about the publisher of a Florida addiction and recovery books company who cried when he read the proposal, and decided to give the writers a chance. This is the creation narrative of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, which has become of the biggest-selling non-fiction franchises in the history of American publishing. It may be worth noting the qualities that make it the right sort of material for a Chicken Soup book: it's short, or condensable; it's uplifting; it expresses populist revenge while avoiding social controversy and bad words; it's true, pretty much; it contains humor, surprise or grief; and it lends itself to a Moment. Writer gives sales figures for Chicken Soup books: "approximately eighty million". The books have also been translated into thirty-five languages. The Chicken Soup enterprise has demolished almost every publishing truism placed in its path. Writer tells about going to the Chicken Soup editorial offices and watching a receptionist named Kristen Allred read submissions. "Some of them don't seem to care if they get published," Allred said. "They just want an outlet." Writer gives profiles of Jack Canfield and Mark Victor, whose names appear on the cover of every Chicken Soup book. People in publishing tend to ricochet between disdain and covetous admiration when they talk about the Chicken Soup books. Canfield and Hansen have turned out to be prodigies. They were unstoppable at marketing their books. The original Chicken book was conceived during the late 1980s when Canfield was conducting motivational workshops. Canfield and Hansen had met through the motivational speakers' circuit. Hansen said, "Let's do the book together." Health Communications, the Florida House that finally published "Chicken Soup for the Soul" ran a first printing of twenty thousand copies. Waving their book around in front of people who don't walk into bookstores became a three year obsession for Canfield and Hansen. They did Kiwanis and PTA meetings...gas stations and bagel shops. "Everywhere we looked: 'Could a book go here?'" In September, 1994, the book made the Times best-seller list. Tells about the process of creating the books. Each Chicken book is a collection, written by scores of people, some of whom have never published before. The drive to package human experience is powerful, but Canfield and Hansen had no idea what they were setting off. Very few places exist in which an ordinary person might hope to share her heart with the rest of the world. The idea of assembling a teen-agers' Chicken book occurred in 1995. Within a few years, the teen-ager books had become a Chicken sub-industry of their own. The books are not overtly Christian; nonetheless, a steady moral code permeates. "Changing the world one story at a time" is the Chicken Soup motto. No Chicken soup title has been on the best-seller list since May. Truth is a big deal at "Chicken Soup for the Soul." Potential contributors sign a pledge that their submissions are "nonfiction." Nobody seems to place much stock in precision of detail, though...
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Names Like Chicken Noodle Soup for the Teenage Soul
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/06/chicken-soup-nation
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