Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

Posted by imakwana 15 hours ago

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Comment by __alexander 12 hours ago

Personally, I see the self-help industry dying because people are starting to realize that it’s just a network of individuals selling products, promoting each other’s products, and creating new avenues to sell more products. I refer to it as the “self-help mafia.” Tim Ferriss kind of created it.

Comment by PatronBernard 1 minute ago

I'd say it's just moved from books to influencers on social media. Still plenty of money in misleading vulnerable people.

Comment by kdheiwns 5 hours ago

Every time someone has said some goofy thing will go away because people are getting smarter or realizing something, it's absolutely not the case. A large number of people will always want someone to tell them that they have everything figured out and others just don't see how great they are, that they'll wake up rich and famous one day, that they're powerful, that they're beautiful, etc. Many will pay to be told this. Many will pay for subscriptions to become even bigger and better.

As an extreme example, pickup artists had a wave of success a few years back and people paid big money for those ridiculous courses. They got replaced with Andrew Tate style "a real man just smokes and fights and hates women" type content and people paid money with the hopes of becoming like them. Trends and life goals change, but people still gobble up self help.

Comment by vidarh 55 minutes ago

I went down a rabbit hole of reading some of the "pickup artist" material many years ago, and it was fascinating because there was a whole range from the really ridiculous "one trick" peddlers who in some cases probably were proto-Andre Tates - isogynists who looked for all kinds of underhanded tactics to trick women and saw it as justified because they saw things as stacked against men - to people who were just a hair shy of more mainstream selfhelp of making yourself better to be more attractive. On the extreme end you'd see NLP, hypnosis and in some cases coaches trying to legitimise things that'd easily cross into assault. On the "near mainstream" end you'd see people pushing meditation, exercise, and mainstream authors on getting better at social situations (e.g. Dale Carnegie).

The former imploded in the aftermath of Neil Strauss' The Game, which made some of the popular techniques well known and/or mocked (e.g. you had Howard on Big Bang Theory who in the beginning "demonstrated" several of the more ridiculous methods) and a lot of the field pivoted towards closer to regular self-help because the weirder stuff would get them called out.

I wonder to what extent that contributed to channeling the people who didn't want to put in the work towards people like Andrew Tate, with the mockery that followed and the less extreme coaches in that field moving away from it leaving a whole bunch of angry young men ripe for the picking, now with one more bone to pick.

Comment by JimsonYang 4 hours ago

agree, there's always going to be a belief for a majority of people that by reading or doing this ONE trick, they can avoid the hard work and sacrifice needed to get to a place/do a task

we've seen it with exercise/dieting we've seen it with women/dating this types of things always persist

Comment by digitaltrees 9 hours ago

Hard disagree. I have read lots of books, participated in events and training seminars and had profound results in my life. My marriage is better because of what I learned, I am a better father and leader because of what I learned. And the fact that people sell things as part of that growth journey is how they support their ability to share the lessons and techniques.

Comment by toasty228 8 minutes ago

You know it's a cult when you can't tell if it's an erowid LSD trip report conclusion or a comment about the self-help community

Comment by jasonfarnon 9 hours ago

"because of what I learned." Do these books/seminars actually teach you something new about being married or a father, that you didn't know before? Like what? I always figured they were more about coaching, persuasion, convincing. To the extent I've scanned them, I never saw any kind of new fact, definitely not about something like being married.

Comment by thepryz 6 hours ago

I view self help books in a similar light as management books. They're usually not going to teach me anything new. What they will do is present something I already know, in potentially new ways and new contexts that allow me to contemplate them and keep them more front of mind. I tend to think of it almost like right thought right action. It's also worth noting that sometimes you just need to be at the right moment in time for a lesson to resonate and stick so reading such books can provide more opportunity for that to happen.

I do, however, try to limit who and what I read though because there is a lot of derivative garbage out there.

Comment by phlsa 59 minutes ago

Exactly that.

I also think of reading self-help books (or management books) as giving myself time to engage with the subject. Even if there is no groundbreaking new information, it gives me time to think about the topic. If you couldn't tell yet, I'm a slow reader.

Comment by sanswork 8 hours ago

I'm definitely a better father because of a bunch of the self help books I've read. Things like better ways to communicate with my son, more effective ways to transfer knowledge, encourage independence, etc. Other areas of my life have definitely improved too though I agree when people say most self help books could be a blog post and in cases where it's an expansion of a blog post I'll generally just go read that.

With these types of books(and I read a lot of self help) I generally expect to get like 1-2 good pieces of advice/ideas per 200 pages so I generally just scan through them until I hit areas that seem high value then read those areas more deeply. I've read all of Tim Ferriss' books and haven't really gotten anything I can think of from his stuff to be honest they are a bit too general for me but I've gotten some good advice from his podcast though I only listen to maybe one episode in 10 when it is with someone or about something that sounds very interesting and even then I tend to scrub through it since there is a lot of filler in a 2 hour podcast.

Comment by rfc3092 7 hours ago

Please share “better father” books.

Comment by murkt 4 hours ago

“Never Split the Difference”, which is a book about how to successfully communicate with terrorists. Very suitable for talking with kids!

I’ve even read aloud a few chapters to my kids, because it’s very suitable for communication with parents as well

Comment by Fantosism 3 hours ago

I mean this with the purest intentions. I've read Never Split the Difference, Never Eat Alone, Getting More, How to Win Friends and Influence People, etc. How do you get it to feel like it's not manipulation? I get all of these books advertise not to lie, but at the end of the day, I'm reshaping my speech to achieve a certain goal, rather than to convey facts. The best line I've come up with is something like: am I serving the other person's actual interests, and would I be fine with them seeing exactly what I'm doing? Honest persuasion seems to survive that test; manipulation usually needs the other person not to notice. Curious how you draw this line? Keep in mind I don't have kids, so haven't really ventured into white lie territory being a necessity.

Comment by Cthulhu_ 12 minutes ago

I've often felt the same way; I've read some of these and (think I) can spot people using those learned things a mile away, and it immediately raises my hackles up. Management and sales people especially. Touch my shoulder or try to shake my hand palm-down just raise alarm bells.

But that's the other side of these books, understanding "the other side" of people.

I like to believe it all adds up to a big pile of knowledge that finds its place in one's personality / outwards behaviour. But to more observant, introspective, overthinking, possibly neurodiverse people, it just adds to a giant pile of social behaviours that some people seem to have naturally while others have learned / are forcing them.

Doing them costs me energy and makes me feel underhanded / ungenuine. At the same time maybe doing it more often will make them feel natural? I have no idea.

Comment by tarsinge 2 hours ago

At their core all these self help books are not teaching you how to reshape your speech, but emotional intelligence. They are teaching better understanding of other and yourself. You can then use this understanding to have more fulfilling relations, or more easily manipulate others if you are less well intentioned. The line is very easy to draw, being honest is natural, you say the truth and are open to genuinely understand and build on the other person responses. On the other hand manipulating takes a very different mindset of faking being open to what others are saying.

Comment by runako 3 hours ago

> I'm reshaping my speech to achieve a certain goal, rather than to convey facts.

When communicating, you don't simply recite every datum you know. You edit, you choose facts to communicate a specific set of points. Those points themselves are not random; they are in service of helping you achieve some goal (to get someone to laugh, or to get someone to do/not do something, or to change someone's opinion of you, to make someone feel comfortable, to get a person to bond with you, or whatever).

> am I serving the other person's actual interests

This is the key.

> would I be fine with them seeing exactly what I'm doing

See my first paragraph. Nobody thinks you are reciting facts at random when you talk to them. QED to the extent anyone thinks about it, they understand that you are trying to advance some agenda (drop the connotation on that word). Because this is how human communication works.

Comment by bildung 43 minutes ago

Many people, especially in the tech field, have false perceptions about the inner workings of the human brain. We aren't rational automatons receiving exactly the data that has been sent out by the other automatons. That's for a multitude of reasons, the most obvious of that is the fact that only a very miniscule part of our thought is conscious (about 2% is the last number I've read about it). Even the fundamental inner workings of the brain differ from the idea you alluded to. Our brain isn't just a parser interpreting the data we receive - instead it is a black box constantly predicting what happens next, and only uses sensory input, both from the outside and from the inside of the body, to validate or falsify the prediction [1]. One of the obvious side effects if this is for example our tendency to ignore facts that don't fit to our current worldview.

So if I know that these things are as they are, and use them to communicate more successfully, is that manipulation? Then it would also be learning manipulation if kids are sent to school to learn how to write well, or how to do a presentation.

I had a situation with my kid a while ago. They were already tired, but had to take a shower. When I proposed that verbally, they denied. Then I showed them the warm water coming out of the showerhead, and they instantly agreed. So I got what I wanted (the kid getting clean), because I knew how to communicate successfully. But that isn't manipulation: I didn't lie, I didn't have a personal advantage at their cost etc. I just made it easier for them to anticipate what taking a shower would feel like.

So perhaps the distinction should be: If I can honestly and wholeheartedly argue to myself that my intentions are to the best of all participants, then that is communication. If I only care about my outcome, or even want to have adverserial outcome for the others, then that is manipulation.

But we can't use "not noticing" some mode of communication as part of the definition of manipulation simply because we all notice almost nothing consciously, compared to the sensory input we get every second of our lifes.

[1] A pretty approachable book about that, written from a researcher: How emotions are made, from Lisa Feldman Barret

Comment by digitaltrees 3 hours ago

I think you’re on the right track. Manipulation is overriding someone’s will in service of your motives. Persuasion is offering new information, while respecting their autonomy to make their own choice. So you are right that intention matters a lot. And the reason it matters is that your commitment to their wellbeing is an investment in the relationship which is a mutual interaction over time not a single event.

That’s also why authenticity and honesty matter. If you lie to your children or spouse or colleague they might do what you want one time but over time not trust you. If you are inauthentic they will also learn that you have ulterior motives and become distrustful.

The last thing I’ll say is it’s not always a negotiation. With young kids or direct reports there is elevation in the relationship, meaning one person gets to make the decision and the other gets to follow the instructions. So when a toddler is saying I don’t want to brush my teeth if you treat it like a negotiation you actually make them less secure about their place in the world because they aren’t ready to make every decision for themself. One good technique I learned is to simply present two choices. “You can brush your teeth or let me brush your teeth”. That’s very different than “let’s go brush your teeth” which can be answered yes or no. So it’s not always necessary to engage in persuasion. Sometimes framing is all you need.

Comment by murkt 2 hours ago

I’ve genuinely read only Never Split the Difference from your list, and it’s kind of the opposite from manipulation.

The book teaches how to actually hear people even in the very emotionally charged situations, how to properly ask them questions to understand their point of view and their needs.

If I understand my son’s needs and can give him what he wants in exchange of him giving me what I want, how is that a manipulation? I can yell at him, impose sanctions (eg no minecraft for two days) and we both will be greatly dissatisfied. Or we can both get what we want, which is a win-win.

Comment by Imustaskforhelp 8 minutes ago

I have read How to Win friends and Influence People and I haven't felt like its manipulation.

[I can be wrong and I usually am ;)] but the book teaches just some way to better re-phrase your best intentions and I have started to think the phrases in my head...

Just be honest with people is what that book taught me. I highly recommend people reading it.

Now I will be honest that reading the book itself isn't gonna give you something. It depends highly on variety of factors. For example, the book also teaches to listen more often and I genuinely try to do it as well but I sometimes fail to do that as I am a bit expressive/talkative

I think it also depends on who you are and how the book reinforces some particular topics. You dont have to completely do everything the book says to have meaningful impact as then it would feel manipulative to other person, yea.

And at the very least, reading this books makes you aware of some logic behind what he's saying (for example. I speak a lot but I should listen more, because people like me are so many and everyone likes to speak and be heard but people who actually listen are rare)

and then I can realize that I am speaking too much and so I think that I am more aware.

More Awareness of a topic doesn't mean complete and utter mastery of it but long term persistence of that awareness helps out meaningfully.

TLDR: Just be yourself and see if something sticks from the books and to implement it slowly and the way you like. There isn't one perfect way (not one even in the books) to living life. At best, its collection of what other successful people are doing. I wouldn't suggest (completely) living off the books because you have your own life and way of living it and you should be honest about it to yourself as well.

Comment by vincnetas 3 hours ago

Read AI summary what “Never Split the Difference” is about. And its a bit scary that you think its suitable for talking with kids. Its pure manipulation technique. If you need to do this to your its most likely you were unable to create a real connection with them before.

Comment by murkt 1 hour ago

Please read the actual book, it’s kind of the opposite from manipulation. You can read more detailed answers in the near branch of comments.

Comment by sanswork 6 hours ago

The self driven child was one I just finished 2 weeks ago that I really enjoyed and felt had a lot of good advice that ran counter to my natural tendencies.

The How to talk books(there are a few of them for different ages), no drama discipline.

Cal Newports books while not specifically about parenting have helped me with disconnecting more from my tech which has always been a challenge since it's my job and a part of a lot of my hobbies which has definitely led to being a better father.

Comment by digitaltrees 3 hours ago

Thanks for the recs. I’ll check them out. I am reading “How to raise humans” right now. Not far enough in to have an opinion yet.

Comment by sanswork 2 hours ago

No worries, I have "Outdoor kids in an indoor world" next that I'm really looking forward to since I struggle with being an indoor dad despite being the type of kid that would leave the house in the morning on my bike and be back at night and went camping every couple weekends. I'll have a look at yours.

Comment by AnimalMuppet 6 hours ago

Here's the problem: You can be a bad father by being too strict, or you can be a bad father by being too lenient.

In Zion National Park there's a hike called Angel's Landing. You wind up on this ridge, with a 1000 foot cliff on one side and a 500 foot cliff on the other side. And the ridge is not very wide - only a couple of feet in some places.

Parenting is like that. You think, oh, I see people causing problems by being too strict, so I want to back away from that cliff. But there's a cliff behind you, so don't back too far...

And the problem with parenting books is that, if you're the kind of parent who needs the books warning you about being too strict, then the books that warn against being too lenient are probably the ones that resonate more with you. That is, you're drawn to the ones you don't need, not to the ones that you do need.

All that said, yes, get books and read them. Be sure to get a variety of them.

I can't give specifics off the cuff, as I'm well past that phase now.

Comment by frankosaurus 4 hours ago

Well stated.

I read Nurture Shock before my kids were born. One of its main arguments is to praise effort rather than natural abilities ("you worked hard" rather than "you're smart"). Being one who naturally withholds praise, its message of not over-praising resonated with me.

In retrospect, I should have praised kid #1 more. It took me 10+ years to realize that. The book was not wrong but also not the message I needed.

Comment by digitaltrees 3 hours ago

I am definitely of the same generation. I notice my mom will praise my kid’s intelligence while we praise their effort. But I’ve definitely noticed my son responds to praise about ability more than my daughter and likely would appreciate more praise than her.

What did you notice and what were the consequences of the strategy of praise. I’d like to learn from your experience.

Comment by digitaltrees 6 hours ago

Totally agree especially since each kid is different and responds to the same technique differently. But there are common things like attachment theory, boundaries creating safety, the tactics of repair after conflict.

Comment by AgentMasterRace 1 hour ago

[flagged]

Comment by matwood 2 hours ago

> Do these books/seminars actually teach you something new about being married or a father, that you didn't know before?

Maybe you were born with all the knowledge necessary to be a good father/husband, but I certainly wasn’t. I imagine most people just have their parents to go off of, and we all know what a can of worms that can be.

Comment by noufalibrahim 2 hours ago

I'd wager that most people have just their parents to go off of and a few recallibrate using their own experiences, learning, and introspecting about them. Those are the few to whom books and seminars are useful as sources.

I think, for a large number of people, self-help (especially the short form high intensity style content that influencers post is just "content" to "consume" - a form of cheap entertainment that's thrown out almost as soon as it's consumed. There's no enduring change. That takes time and an semi-innate desire to change. Then, all these things become sensible and useful.

I'm not a big fan of Ferris but I'm willing to bet that someone who sits down with one of his books and works through it slowly applying the lessons to his or her own life will see some kind of change as opposed to the typical person who just asks an LLM to summarise the book or a video about it and then decides that they've changed.

Comment by DrewADesign 8 hours ago

Only hard facts change your perspective?

Lacking happiness or charisma or confidence or the ability to quit smoking or any other run-of-the-mill self-help topic isn’t caused by a lack of relevant data: it’s a matter of perspective. Often, the best way to push through the problem is getting the perspective of someone that’s thought about it more. Whether self help books are an effective medium for that is another topic, but if they’re not, lacking hard facts wouldn’t be the problem.

Comment by jayers 7 hours ago

Self help usually doesn't teach you anything that is new. Usually they just repackage the same common sense that you've heard a million times before in a new way. That doesn't mean it is useless though, I have had my own life changed by several self help/business books.

Sometimes you just need someone to tell you common sense in the right way so that you actually listen to it.

Comment by digitaltrees 7 hours ago

You don’t come out of the womb with common sense. And you don’t know all common sense possible.

Comment by digitaltrees 7 hours ago

Yes. I learned new techniques like: victim vs author perspective. wife and I did a training where she went first, learned the the technique (tell a story of a fight like you are the most sympathetic victim then tell it again like you were the author) and it immediately shifted both of our perspectives about a conflict we hadn’t been able to resolve for 6 months because she told both versions and immediately understood where I was coming from. I am personally grateful we both know that technique now.

Comment by eru 4 hours ago

> Do these books/seminars actually teach you something new about being married or a father, that you didn't know before? Like what?

I'm as skeptical as you are, but teaching you something you didn't know before ain't the only channel they could conceivable help through.

Eg reading their bible can help a devout christian, even though there's nothing in there they didn't already know.

Comment by TeMPOraL 1 hour ago

Knowledge has to come from somewhere. Not everyone has perfect parents to couch them on marriage and parenthood.

Comment by kqr 4 hours ago

I recently read Attia's Outlive which is about what sort of lifestyle makes one more resilient against diseases of old age.

I'm not in a position to verify more than a few of the factual claims made by the author (and a lot of it sounds like mumbo-jumbo), but it was persuasive enough to get me to exercise for health (instead of performance at a specific event) and my life has gotten much easier since I came to that realisation. Maybe I would have done so eventually without the book, but I'm glad the book sped the process up.

Comment by groundzeros2015 3 hours ago

Yes. I think about a few framings from books all the time.

Comment by Fr0styMatt88 9 hours ago

I mean I can see it. Books are just a way to transmit one’s thoughts and experiences to other people. So it’s no different to being exposed to someone with a different viewpoint. Common sense isn’t common or innate, it’s tribal knowledge.

There’s that XKCD about someone learning something new that was just thought to be something everyone knew.

Also you don’t know what you don’t know.

Agree though — coaching and persuasion are a huge part which is why I think a lot of these books seem ‘fluffy’ if all you’re wanting is a collection of facts.

Comment by coliveira 6 hours ago

What I find funny is people saying in social media that they read dozens of books, and when you see what they're reading is mostly self-help volumes! If you read one or two of these books you already know what they'll say in 100s of others. It's very similar to religious books: the content is always the same, they just rearrange things so people will continue consuming more of the same ideas.

Comment by Npovview 1 hour ago

I agree with you. Self-help industry has evolved to cover lot of nuanced topics. Depression, anxiety adjacent topics. Once the basics are recognized, the other aspects like what to expect when you grow old. what to expect after retirement etc.

How to care less about what other people think, but in a healthy way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uyR_cXGBMY

Comment by JumpCrisscross 9 hours ago

Can you share an easy-to-understand example for someone who is similarly highly sceptical of self-help products?

Comment by randycupertino 5 hours ago

How to Win Friends and Influence People helped my career a ton. I stopped having to job search and started getting pulled up as people I knew from work advanced they would bring me with them. I haven't had to job hunt in 9 years and it's solely because that book made me more likable and personable.

It made me enjoy life more too, because I have a diaspora of cool and interesting connections who would go to bat for me if needed. I'm friends with the grocery store checkout guy now, he asked me to go antiquing with him two weeks ago. I made friends in my neighborhood, I have a lady I walk with every week who offered to help me garden and even when ordering flooring from Home Depot the dude invited me to come to NASCAR with him and his buddies.

It honestly just changed my perspective to see the good in everyone and through this process boosted my personal, professional and family relationships immensely.

Comment by delbronski 2 hours ago

I too read the book in my younger years, and it helped me a lot with making friends and my career. However, the book itself is filled with some terrible advice for communicating with people. I realized that as an older person. But as a young person it filled me much needed confidence. Like many of these books, the actual advice is crap, but I think it gives people the confidence they need to change something in their lives they are not happy with.

I highly recommend the podcast: If Books Could Kill. They have an episode on this book.

Comment by ragequittah 4 hours ago

>it's solely because that book made me more likable and personable.

This is the part that gets me to have an almost allergic reaction. It feels like an almost homogenization of people's personalities. In my mind I picture it like this: business man A reads How to Win Friends and Influence People. Businessman B also reads it. Business man A meets B and see that they're doing the psychological tricks of the book and think "wow this guy sure knows how to win friends and influence people like I do" so they get along fantastically.

It's similar to my aversion to books like "The Game" where some men seem to have the idea there's a surefire way to pick up women. Humans are diverse and should have differences in how they treat others and react. "Remember their name, smile, talk about the other person" and all the other tricks often gets me in the mindset of "this person is media trained / inauthentic".

Comment by digitaltrees 3 hours ago

I would reframe the question you’re asking. Instead of assuming that the interaction with business man A and B is fake, that it’s done for an ulterior motive, that it requires being inauthentic and suppressing your personality, all of which isn’t part of what makes people connect to each other ask “but did they enjoy the experience and make a friend”. There are known interactions patterns that result in people connecting to each other. If you want to connect with others learn how to.

And the book “the game” isn’t an example of that skill. People that follow those techniques find out quickly that they end up destroying the connections they make really quickly.

Comment by onoesworkacct 4 hours ago

I haven't read it yet, but reading it is not going to change your personality. Personality defines how you receive it.

If you change your entire personality based on a self-help book.. that probably says a lot about your personality.

And anyway twin studies make the hardware seem more impactful than the software in many ways..

Comment by digitaltrees 3 hours ago

Personality is not a static entity. It’s a feedback loop, a conversation you can have with yourself to adjust over time. My brother had intense anxiety in cars. He applied techniques that improved his ability to handle the situation. Saying he has an anxious personality is ultimately defeatist and not reflective of the agency we each possess.

And twin studies, while persuasive that biology does have a massive impact are not dispositive compared to similar studies on human development theory that has longer population sizes that show self dialogue can shape behavior over time.

Comment by K0balt 4 hours ago

Except that is not what the book teaches at all. Sometimes people can’t take the advice of “just be a better person and care about other people” unless it’s explained to them more specifically and anchored to their goals. It’s not because they are inauthentic, it’s because they are lacking skills and understanding.

Comment by AussieWog93 3 hours ago

I actually crashed out semi-recently about this exact thing, quit church and all and was genuinely surprised when the people who were speaking politeley to me reached out in a genuine, non-public and non-coerced way.

I don't think the word "inauthentic" quite captures why people react negatively to this sort of communication.

At least part of it comes from the fact that this particular style of "kindness-is-cool-coded" (for lack of a better word) communication happens to be the preferred style of insanely passive-aggressive people who take it upon themselves to brutally sabotage anyone who they deem unacceptable. It can also feel like you're being lead on by someone who actively dislikes you but is too polite to say it. Or you just start second-guessing every single thing they say and do.

But honestly, there's a pretty sizable minority of people who are repelled by this type of person and if you're naturally bad at reading the room you're probably better off making friends with other people that say and do dumb things.

I know I went through a "How to Win Friends and Influence People" phase when younger and basically ended up just putting off a whole of people.

Comment by defrost 2 hours ago

Culturally many Australians have an ingrained and likely healthy aversion to feeling they are being "handled" or manipulated in some manner.

Likely stems from a hundred and fifty odd years of the "always British" types swanning it over the "this is where we live and we love it" crowd.

Comment by parineum 4 hours ago

> Humans are diverse and should have differences in how they treat others and react.

Even though I agree with you, that's not a fact and, if a bunch of people are happy all being exactly the same, that's great for them. You can have any amount of ideas about how things should be but if someone is happy the way they are, that's what's important, that's the end goal.

Comment by ragequittah 4 hours ago

I just wonder if some people don't often get to their end years and regret putting on an inauthentic mask their entire life because a book told them to. Having dialogues with people like it's a transaction to win instead of a conversation.

Comment by huimang 3 hours ago

Good thing that's not what the book is about.

Comment by apatry 9 hours ago

Getting Things Done by David Allen gave me a framework to get out of the weeds when I am overwhelmed (usually once or twice a year when I stretch myself): build a to-do list that us complete enough to stop thinking about what you have to do, if a new task take less than 5 minutes just do it right away, and then prioritise the rest.

Deep Work by Cal Newport gave me a way to think about my time management: information work is not the same as a factory line where doing the same thing at similar productivity from 9 to 5 makes sense, and it is important to dedicate long stretch of quality time to be productive (vs busy).

There are no silver bullets, but learning what worked for a group of people, testing it for myself, adapting it, and using it as needed has been helpful to me.

Comment by coliveira 6 hours ago

Yes, I read "Getting Things Done": he teaches you to make todo lists! That's it, nothing profound or from another planet. Basically you could get that information in 1 paragraph: "if you're overwhelmed, make a todo list", but he wouldn't have made a lot of money that way...

Comment by laserlight 5 hours ago

That's quite a reductionist view of Getting Things Done. There's nothing magic about the system, but someone had to put it together. It has been useful to me.

Comment by kamaal 6 hours ago

There is more than that, though. Deadlines, Next Tasks, Weekly list purge/build, Yearly alignment etc etc.

Also how you teach somebody a thing matters.

Stories have a profound effect on humans since the earliest of our days.

Comment by sanswork 8 hours ago

After reading digital minimalism I did the digital declutter process and found a lot of extra space in my life once I removed distractions that felt "essential" but didn't actually miss once they were gone. I also found other things that were low value/distractions that I still wanted in my life so I've just accepted them(like browsing reddit occasionally during the day though I've changed it so I don't comment on reddit anymore since that ties me to a feeling of wanting to check responses/look for upvotes/etc)

Comment by digitaltrees 8 hours ago

1. Fact vs interpretation. Many things we think of as facts are really our narrative interpretations that are incomplete. A few self help books talk about the story of 4 blind men that are asked to interact with an object: one says it’s a snake, one says it’s a tree, one says it’s a wall, one says it’s a flag. Their interpretations are all wrong, it’s an elephant trunk, leg, body and ear. So when someone says my boss was unfair and mean, that’s not a fact, it’s a narrative interpretation, for all you know they are committed to mentoring you and sometimes that requires trial by fire. Drill Sargent, medical residency, and many professions have converged on that type of training. It’s much easier to stay connected to a spouse, child or coworker when you are operating on the assumption that your beliefs and their beliefs might both be equally valid. The righteousness of having “the facts” destroys a relationship. It’s not that there aren’t facts or right answers but a little humility as a finite being has a lot of benefits.

2. Dispute resolution. There is a three step process that transforms how you fight. A) what did I do to contribute, B) what I’ll do different next time, C) I am sorry and I’ll do X to make amends. When you do this you stop blaming others, which is what causes defensiveness, escalation, and the cascade of in tractable conflict. When you lead with this you’ll be amazed that your counter party feels heard, seen, validated, and connected to you and all of the sudden stops attacking, defending and starts to listen.

3. Characterization. In our lives we often define people based on aspects of their personality that are incomplete. The problem is that stunts their growth and limits the depth of the relationship. So the “ambitious” daughter, “funny” son, “techy” coworker gets defined as only that and can’t break out of it in relation to the person characterizing them. So when the ambitious kid has a failure they turn to the parent for support and get characterized instead treated like a human being that can change. So when an “ambitious” kid says I don’t want to go to university are they suddenly not ambitious? Are they allowed to redefine themselves? There are entire categories of books written by people with a chip on their shoulder because they were characterized.

I did a leadership training that had a session on purpose. They discussed the Harvard study that followed people over their lives and careers and their reported sense of wellbeing. The clear trend of what creates fulfillment at the end of life makes it hard to dwell on a lot of what most people suffer for during different phases of life. I have seen people in college, law school, early careers, doing startups, being parents, even all grinding it out and then looking back with the realization they were and remain miserable.

I could keep going and going and going.

Comment by seizethecheese 5 hours ago

Kudos for delivering.

#1 sounds a lot like stoicism.

Comment by digitaltrees 4 hours ago

Question for you, is my handle orange? I realized my company went stale after a pivot. Just curious if that is reflected on HN.

I was recently surprised by a bookface status change :) might need to reach out to say “hey still alive just not in the original form”.

Comment by rustystump 8 hours ago

Most self help books can be boiled down to very obvious tools and coping strategies. If it is the first time you have come across the concepts, it can be useful but if it isnt, it is useless.

Is paying 15$ too much to pay? If learning about an obvious but unknown idea for doing the things saves 10 minutes a week, it is.

Do you need to pay 15$ for the result? No. But a result is better than no result.

Comment by keybored 2 hours ago

I reach for my revolver when someone says that they are a better leader. That might mean that they have a captive audience of sycophants.

The outdated sense of leader of the willingly lead is a different matter.

Comment by digitaltrees 1 hour ago

Why such a strong reaction? Do you think good leaders exist?

I have received multiple emails from alumni thanking me for my leadership, mentorship, and the culture I created. Leading is a skill like any other it can be improved with practice and I have worked hard at it.

My team has no problem disagreeing with me and knows I don’t want sycophantic agreement, they know that even if I ultimately make a decision I will consider all opinions and have seen me change my mind in response to a direct report disagreeing with me in public.

There are known mechanisms to foster a safe and effective environment like that such as separating people from ideas, removing consequences for failure and commitment to experimentation.

Comment by adaml_623 1 hour ago

Tell us about this good leader concept and why you think it's outdated? Is it just uncommon?

And why can't you believe someone's statement about themselves? How is it different to saying they're a good runner?

Comment by dartharva 6 hours ago

Pretty sure that's a result of the larger gestalt driven more by your own drive and savviness to seek new ideas on living than the books themselves, as it is for everyone who claims to have benefited. If the books are gone today and only LLMs remain, nothing will change in this front.

Comment by breezybottom 9 hours ago

Well grifters can also be marks. It sounds like you're both.

Comment by digitaltrees 9 hours ago

Sounds like you need to learn some healthy communication. If this is how you show up in relation to others your network of collaborators will be small, keep you weak and limit your ability to effectuate your will in the world.

Comment by JackFr 8 hours ago

> limit your availability to effectuate your will in the world.

It might limit his ability to effect his will in the world, but I see his availability as unchanged.

Comment by digitaltrees 7 hours ago

What do you feel when you make a comment like that? Satisfied at your intellectual superiority? Confident in your status as someone able to see what’s right? Proud of yourself that you “tell it like it is”

Have you ever stopped to think about the prices you pay for that behavior?

Let’s game it out. You don’t know me. I could be Paul Graham for all you know. I could be the person in the world that would unlock the very door you need to open to get what you’re working towards. I could be someone totally vulnerable and insecure and end up cascading into despair based on your comment.

That being said. I thought it was a funny comment.

Comment by altmanaltman 4 hours ago

Your first paragraph is just a barrage of personal insults.

Your second paragraph is playing the victim while you just acted the agrresor in the previous.

Your third paragraph seems to make it sound like you have a point but it essentially boils down to we are all strangers on the internet. And okay?

If you had just written the last sentence, i would have respected your comment much more.

I know i am just a stranger but we are talking about perception and self help here. And from what I've read, i am not leaving with a positive perception of you based on your comments sorry.

Comment by digitaltrees 3 hours ago

Your interpretation was that they were meant as insults. They weren’t. I was asking a question about their intentions with several posited motives. Based on the statement, I wondered how they were feeling and I invited them to engage in self reflection. I don’t care if they were having those feelings, and I don’t think anyone is wrong for those types of feelings. It’s just that there are consequences to acting on those feelings in the way that they did.

I don’t think anyone is a victim or an aggressor. Both people do something to contribute to any conflict and are responsible to acknowledge what they did as the first step (see my previous post).

The point that we are strangers is that 1. he is making assumptions on incomplete information and expressing it with confidence that is unwarranted and 2. For all he knows I could be someone that, in real life, he would regret alienating like that.

As far as your opinion of my comments, your perspective is as valid as mine. I am curious, what do you think my positions are? What do you think my intentions are in this thread?

Comment by coliveira 6 hours ago

> That being said. I thought it was a funny comment.

This is very passive aggressive. You should think about how you communicate to people.

Comment by digitaltrees 5 hours ago

Not really passive. I made my position clear. I can take a joke and wasnt offended. It's also true that such behavior has a cost. Your interpretation that I offer that perspective to hurt them or defend myself is inaccurate, I actually want to help improve people, so it was actually an act of kindness.

Comment by DrewADesign 7 hours ago

Not if that boorish behavior alienated their administrative assistant.

Comment by digitaltrees 7 hours ago

Thanks for proof reading for me.

Comment by breezybottom 7 hours ago

That's fine, but at least I don't sound like a Linkedin serial entrepreneur.

Comment by digitaltrees 6 hours ago

I cant respond to your last response, probably because it was flagged. But I'll say, after looking at your other posts that drip with disdain and what appears to me to be arrogance masking self loathing I hope you recognize the price you pay for speaking to people that way. You don't know me, who I am or what I have done. And life isn't about the transactional potential of relationships, but saying something like "i guess the prompt engineer thing didn't work out" on hacker news is naive and risky. There are world class engineers, VCs, senior execs and beginners that will end up doing amazing things. Your behavior has consequences for you and the world.

Comment by breezybottom 6 hours ago

Maybe, but you're gullible enough to buy self-help books, so you'll probably lose any money you make in a crypto scheme.

Comment by digitaltrees 4 hours ago

Your pattern matching couldn't be further from the truth. I am in the krugman camp on currencies and economics generally which is to say I have been a long term skeptic of crypto since the beginning.

I am not a failed prompt coder, I personally built am a health care ehr that integrated a wide range of legacy tech well before AI as a coding agent was a glimmer in anyone's eye.

I say that in the hopes that you understand your insults are missing the mark so maybe it's time to update your wetware.

Comment by digitaltrees 7 hours ago

Like Paul Graham or dalton Caldwell or half of YC? We are all serial entrepreneurs

Comment by breezybottom 6 hours ago

I guess the prompt engineer thing didn't work out huh

Comment by chrisweekly 6 hours ago

I think you're arguing with a trollbot

Comment by rimliu 2 hours ago

too much sugar is never healthy.

Comment by Cthulhu_ 18 minutes ago

I can't stop referring to the irony that the gist of "the 4-hour work week" is to write a book about working only 4 hours a week.

But also pretty much all of the self-help books I've read can be summarized in a few paragraphs, that is, a blog post. The rest is repetition or examples. Which are important for learning and understanding, I suppose, but when an AI can both tell you the gist of it while applying it directly to your current situation, they can't compete.

Comment by wyclif 9 minutes ago

Tim Ferriss has been called out on these "ironies" for years now: https://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/01/08/5-time-management-...

Comment by an0malous 10 hours ago

> it’s just a network of individuals selling products, promoting each other’s products, and creating new avenues to sell more products

I've got some bad news for you about the SaaS industry

Comment by gdhkgdhkvff 9 hours ago

Considering he named it “the Tim Ferris mafia” makes me think he’s fully aware of that.

Comment by watwut 10 hours ago

The sooner people realize that, the better.

Comment by curuinor 12 hours ago

Dale Carnegie created it, Tim Ferriss is a century too late to point as origin.

Comment by lanamo 4 hours ago

Or you could say in other words: Everything is a remix!

Dale Carnegie and Steven Covey have both been heavily influenced by Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychotherapist and founder of individual psychology.

Comment by ransom1538 11 hours ago

Dale Carnegie -> Jim Rohn -> Tony Robbins -> [all hacks now]

Comment by adamtaylor_13 7 hours ago

It is wild to me that people consider Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins in the same boat. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie completely changed how I communicate with people, for the better.

For nerds (like me) who think data and statistics are the way to persuade people, you're doing yourself a disservice by ignoring the truth. Lots of people think sales are icky, but much of life is influenced by your ability to persuade and sell, even yourself, to others.

Comment by curuinor 11 hours ago

the man leveraged the fact that his name was the same as Andrew Carnegie (having no relation) to launch a publishing empire. it was hacks from the beginning

Comment by MengerSponge 11 hours ago

Highly recommend "If Books Could Kill"

https://bsky.app/profile/ifbookspod.bsky.social

It really is all the same book.

Comment by ctoa 7 hours ago

The very first thing I did when coming to this thread was search for if someone had already mentioned "one book theory". My favorite episodes of IBCK are mostly the self-help trash.

Comment by sharadov 10 hours ago

All the writers that I love to hate - hariri, gladwell! Will give it a listen

Comment by sanswork 8 hours ago

I wanted to love it since despite being a self help reader I can definitely see a lot of the bad/dangerous advice given all over the place but I often found them really stretching to make stuff negative and being very smug about it which just made it the same issue as the source material. Especially annoying since in most cases there were really solidly valid negatives to go after in the books. It's very much a lets build a straw man then tear it down podcast.

Comment by jpfromlondon 3 minutes ago

[dead]

Comment by xKingfisher 11 hours ago

Even worse he changed his name from Carnagey, presumably to deliberately cause confusion.

Comment by HatchedLake721 9 hours ago

Why is Tony Robbins a hack?

Comment by anitil 7 hours ago

I think calling these people 'hacks' is not quite the right word. They're very good at what they do, it's just a lot of people don't like or don't value what they do. I actually have a fair bit of respect for their craft (the ability to draw attention and turn that attention in to customers) even if I feel like what they're selling is fake, or fake-adjacent

Comment by arethuza 1 hour ago

"It’s just a network of individuals selling products, promoting each other’s products, and creating new avenues to sell more products"

That's hardly unique to the self-help world - doesn't a lot of tech also fall into that category?

Comment by ElProlactin 1 hour ago

If you're looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else?

- George Carlin

Comment by vld_chk 9 hours ago

I do not have data, but from first glance, if anything, the overall demand for self-help and self-improvement increases Y/Y. We can correlate it with a sharp drop in alcohol sales, or raising revenues of therapy industry or fitness industry. YT and podcasts still looming too.

But the form of books … Yes, by some reason it collapses. I personally attribute it not to “people realise those guys are salesmen”, but with the fact that none of really good ideas were produced by such books for a while. Now anyone who really has a new angle or new idea to say — they go straight to YT/podcasts, bypassing writing a book altogether. Because of this, me personally, when I check bookshelves, do not see any really new or interesting idea published in the field.

Comment by throwaway2037 2 hours ago

Your comment gave me an idea. First, start with this assumption: Self-help is "someone trying to sell an idea that may improve your life (health, business/wealth, relationships)". Second, consider the mediums that we use to sell self-help. Traditionally, it was in-person/live events. Basically, 100 to 1000 people sit in a big room and listen to a person talk on stage. Usually, there is some Q&A, raise your hands for voting, etc. Now think about the revenue side: How do you scale that business? Publish a book with the same ideas. The in-person events create a personal brand, and books help you scale the business.

Next, consider the mediums for selling self-help: (1) in-person events, (2) books, (3) YouTube. (1) scales the least, but has the highest branding building effect. (2) scales medium, because it costs money for the customer to buy the book. (3) scales infinitely, because it is nearly free. Further, the most financially successful YouTubers first build a personal brand, then begin sell product placement by sponsorships. Further, they also begin selling "merch" (channel merchandise). That is the real gold mine of YouTube. Even sponsonships for most channels with less than one million subscribers pales in comparison to selling "merch".

About (1) (2) and (3) above, I would say that humans are usually more influenced by [the most] (1) seeing a person live, [next most] (3) seeing a person on video, and [the least] (2) reading their book. Thus, it seems logical that YouTube will replace books for self-help.

Without reading the article, my first instinct (after writing the above) is that self-help books are not being replaced with AI/LLMs. Instead, they are being replaced by self-help YouTube channels.

Comment by mcmoor 3 hours ago

I'm curious how correlated they are to decline of books in general

Comment by throwaway27448 3 hours ago

Is this really a new revelation?

Anyway, "self help" is still one of the largest sections at my local barnes and noble—certainly by far the largest non-fiction section.

Comment by raincole 9 hours ago

Self-help industry is something that literally can't die. It's in the same category as astrology and technical analysis.

Comment by darth_avocado 10 hours ago

Also personally, my self help consumption (across all media) has been dropping lately. Part of it is that quality of content has been worsening over the years. But the part that’s put me off the most is the general burnout I’m facing in life: professional stagnation, uncertain future (will I be employed in a year?), more work, financial pressure, politics upending my life directly etc. Funnily enough I’ve started consuming more content around hobbies, crafts and other fun stuff, which the blog mentions was one of the only two categories that saw growth in sales.

I wonder if that is a reason for the decline rather than AI.

Comment by throwaway2037 2 hours ago

    > my self help consumption (across all media) has been dropping lately
I want to propose an alternative theory about why your viewership is dropping. Whatever made you originally watch self-help on a particular topic is no longer as interesting. Let's say you were struggling with (a) exercise/fitness/diet, (b) personal/romantic relationships, or (c) business/"success"/wealth. (These are easily the three biggest categories for self-help.) You watched a few hundred hours of self-help YouTube videos over a few years and you learned how to improve. Now, the content is less interesting.

I share this idea because I see a similar pattern in myself. For the self-help YouTube videos that I do watch, I am/was most interested in (a) exercise/fitness/diet and (b) personal/romantic relationships. After 1000 hours or so of this sort of content, I learned how to improve and "ascended". Now, I don't need to watch as much because my thinking on these topics is more advanced.

Deeper: How will these channels sustain themselves? It does not look obvious to me! If I were running a self-help channel, I might intentionally delete old videos after 6-12 months. Why? So that I can remake the same content again (and again)... to get a revenue boost from new(er) viewers. For anyone who is a full-time self-help content creator, probably 90% of the revenue is made in the first 30 days. (Wild guess, but there will be an extreme cliff of some sort.)

Comment by throwaway2037 2 hours ago

    > starting to realize
You think people didn't know the same in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 00s, etc? Related: Every single diet fad in the last 50 years (except GLP-1) did not work. Yet, many people continue to buy into every new diet fad.

Comment by protocolture 7 hours ago

Yeah I got a free medical "coach" and the coaching was sub par, and mostly used to try and press me into non free services.

A lot of those non free services seemed to involve very poorly written and syndicated coaching apps.

Comment by thomassmith65 1 hour ago

There was a self-help industry long before Tim Ferriss.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" is still popular today. Dale Carnegie wrote it in 1936.

Back in the '80s and '90s Tony Robbins infuriated millions of North Americans by spamming late television with his obnoxious self-help infomercials: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gUczh_vsRUI

As long as there have been dissatisfied people, there probably has been someone promising to be a deus ex macchina with the secret to turn their lives around.

Comment by rapidfl 4 hours ago

This is a good point. If there was timeless material, they would continue to sell. Maybe War of Art or Meditations still continue to sell. Deep Work is a joke.

Comment by 11 hours ago

Comment by mmahemoff 10 hours ago

Why now though? Based on the sharp decline since 2022 (according to Ferris’s numbers), s/books/chatbots seems like the Occam’s Razor explanation here.

Comment by teekert 2 hours ago

Yeah, there is just too much Tony Robbins referring to cells living of light in some jar linked directly to your work productivity (and thousands of other debunked BS "facts"). The levels of coaches for coaches for coaches for coaches on LinkedIn is approaching levels that shouldn't even be possible. I feel like almost everything about this topic has been said, but the amount of things being said is increasing exponentially, and it's all coming out of thin air. Like an LLM expanding the current body of work.

I for one used to enjoy such books but have turned more to mind-fuck scifi (i.e. I keep hunting for the Ted Chiang level books, although they are also very rare). I find meaning in those.

Comment by Quarrelsome 10 hours ago

you've giving people way too much credit here. People never start to realise en-masse.

Comment by 627467 8 hours ago

A self-help movement worth their reputation is one that sells more than a book. In fact many give away the book and then charge you a sub for being part of a club

Comment by tbmtbmtbmtbmtbm 7 hours ago

Then you could frame the collapse of this writer's book as a 'hit'

Comment by wang_li 11 hours ago

Self help is just education from a book rather than from an in person instructor.

Comment by 1-6 6 hours ago

OP is describing Dave Ramsey

Comment by mannanj 5 hours ago

this self help industry completely reversed my diabetes, brought my adventure and satisfaction, and let me to making the best friends of my life.

maybe you are judging and dismissing something with prejudice?

Comment by dimitrios1 6 hours ago

Not to be a contrarian, because I agree for a lot of the industry, but there are some genuine gems out there. Few examples:

Extreme Ownership really helped me be a better leader and take more accountability for my own actions

Atomic Habits really helped me think about goal setting and what the underlying driver was

Coaching Habit improved my 1:1s drastically (I basically stopped talking or advice giving and just listened -- profound, I know, but the book helped smack me in the face with it)

Many more examples, but there is definitely a ton of self-help hack slop out there as well.

Comment by digitaltrees 1 hour ago

Totally agree. So many people talk when they should listen.

Comment by Razengan 2 hours ago

> the self-help industry

About 15 years ago my friend showed me this video of a "self-help" guy he was impressed with and inspired by.

..it was over 30 minutes of rambling that sounded like it makes senses but meant nothing and lead nowhere.

Looking back it was like listening to how early LLMs were: Just long strings of random words and vague sentences without actually saying anything.

Or how Saruman's power of the tongue was described as.

It's depressing and obvious to see how many people could be misled by this kind of charlatanism.

AI if done right could cut a lot of crap from human society.

Comment by dartharva 6 hours ago

Tim Ferris? Bro humanity has invented religion that served exactly this purpose long since before it even invented the wheel.

Comment by aaron695 5 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by enos_feedler 6 hours ago

Unless you have hard proof this is occurring then I would rather believe my own and others positive testimony on self help. Its powerful and relatively affordable if you are committed to making changes in your own life. Is good advice. Authentic stories (generally). I am just grateful that people take the time and effort to reflect and encode their experience into something digestible by others. It’s pretty cynical to have your view.

Comment by cryptonym 1 hour ago

> prescriptive nonfiction is the canary in the coal mine

Self-help is not the canary for other genre. Self-help doesn't comme with significant art. Their consumer gets a better experience through LLM that extracts the substance and contextualizes it.

It doesn't tell what will happen at scale regarding fiction and other content where people tends to expect a genuine human contribution. Sure you can get success with AI-written or AI-assisted writing, but it doesn't mean human written books will no longer catch interest.

Comment by uberex 4 hours ago

4 hour work weeks is:

Draw circle: Set up a highly successful business (prerequisite)

Rest of owl: Delegate stuff (what the book says to do).

It is pretty useless. Not suprised sales have declined especially since startups probably got harder since when it was written.

Comment by throwaway2037 2 hours ago

This is a brilliant summary. I recall following Michael Lynch's journey while he built TinyPilot (https://tinypilotkvm.com/). I was blown away by how hard he grinded to build that business. It just never let up -- the competition. As successful as he was, the exit value seemed like a let down (I say that as a fan!). So, I agree: "Draw circle" by far the hardest part. For "rest of owl", just hire other (grind-ier/thirst-ier) people to do it for you!

Comment by m0llusk 4 hours ago

Perhaps, but them how do you explain the claimed pattern that sales had been unusually consistent until just recently?

Comment by haritha-j 1 hour ago

Hard to tell without numbers to back it up. The author's baseline is the year chatGPT was released, i have no idea at what rate they've been declining before that.

Comment by geraneum 2 hours ago

> 2025 was the first big drop, 2026 looks more severe, and the only thing that’s really changed in that timeframe is the acceleration of AI.

It all hinges on this statement. But I’m not sure it’s really AI that’s doing it, and not just a contributing factor. There’s higher cost of living, inflation, economic uncertainty, seemingly looming financial crisis, etc. A lot of impactful things happened!

Comment by felooboolooomba 2 hours ago

Yes, I'd be interested in seeing this compared to book sales in general.

Comment by schnitzelstoat 45 minutes ago

Most of these non-fiction, non-technical self-help books are just trash.

I say non-technical because the ones about specific subjects like "What to expect in the first year" etc. can be pretty good, but the more general "improve your life" ones are usually awful.

Comment by heisenbit 12 hours ago

Some of the best books on JS which were online went recently off-line for that reason. Blog post by the author: https://2ality.com/ (Dr. Axel Rauschmayer)

Comment by throwaway2037 1 hour ago

I read the blog post. It is interesting to me. First, a dumb question: Does putting your website behind a Cloudflare "human tester thingy" help prevent this situation? If not, continue reading. Let's construct a parallel universe. Suppose AI/LLM scaped all JavaScript content except his website(s). Would the outcome look different? I doubt it. In the end, technical books are dead. They will be replaced with AI/LLMs. Even Stack Overflow (which I started using in 2010) effectively killed my need to buy expensive technical books from O'Reilly. And AI/LLMs basically killed Stack Overflow.

Comment by duckfruit 6 hours ago

This makes me indescribably sad. Dr. Rauschmayer's books and articles helped me tremendously early in my career. I owe him a debt of gratitude.

Comment by noveltyaccount 8 hours ago

I have read countless self help books where I complained about fluffy filler material and the book should have been fifty pages instead of two hundred. Not a surprise to me that a topic distilled through an LLM is a better experience.

Comment by Gigachad 5 hours ago

Or youtube. The youtube video essays can still be way too much waffle, but it's at least capped out at about 30 minutes and cost you nothing so you can quit if it's not useful.

Comment by throwaway2037 1 hour ago

Can you imagine the day when an AI/LLM-assisted tool can watch a YouTube video at super speed and then clip X% of the video to show you the best parts? I can see it coming. It might really hurt YouTube revenues.

Recently, I had a similar idea when I tried to watch the TV series "SAS: Rogue Heroes". I quit after a few episodes because it was so damn slow. I spent most of each episode skipping pointless dialog and overly long landscape/driving scenes that added little to the story. I am sure the two seasons (10-20 hours) could easily be condensed into a much more exciting 2-4 hour film. I have heard the saying that the hardest type of novel to write is the shortest one. Constraint forces an author to carefully select the words, characters, and storyline that make the most compelling novel. When I was younger, films were rarely more than 90 minutes. These days, so many of them are more than 120 minutes with very little gained... just the same story was watered down over 30+ more minutes.

Comment by jeffrwells 10 minutes ago

that future is here!

I set up my claw to be able to do that and it’s infinitely better than searching through hours of content myself.

I set it up as experts on topics I already know and like to reduce noise. So I can say “ask [NAME] what I should do about XYZ” and I get back contextualized info and cited video clips

Comment by TheCapeGreek 2 hours ago

For better or worse, AI is beating on video essays too.

Maybe my attention span is truly stuffed, but I really can't stand it when a video essay is the most succinct source on a topic - waiting for someone to express their thoughts in speech, with sometimes slow cadences or their own waffling, combined with sponsor segments (yes I use SponsorBlock, but sometimes or on other devices ads get through), etc.

So I use AI summary for a lot of informational videos now unless I actually am watching it for the entertainment and production value. I don't need 10 minutes on "this will change the way we look at XYZ" that has only 1 minute of real information in it.

Comment by throwaway2037 1 hour ago

    > video essays
In the last few months, I have watched many YouTube videos from the Australia Broadcasting Corp (ABC) subtitled "If You're Listening" [1]. They are primarily about geo/political issues, but there are some odd-ball ones about Japanese land-use & development policy. I think that the production is very high quality. (1) They do they research. (2) They find lots of interesting funny old video clips. (3) They add helpful "infographics". (4) They stitch all together with a modestly funny script. All in combination: It works very well. I find that I never need to skip boring parts -- either the script is interesting or the visual content is interesting. Would you consider this type of video a "video essay"?

I am honestly curious why ABC produces such high quality content that is given away for (nearly) free on YouTube. I would hazard a guess that they spend no less than 10K USD to produce each episode (surely more, to be honest -- skilled labour isn't cheap in Australia). Does anyone know if these videos are also aired on Australian broadcast TV? (That would help for advertising revenue.)

[1] YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN7rBX00xjQ&list=PLDTPrMoGHs...

Comment by clydethefrog 29 minutes ago

They are provided for free because a quick scroll through the playlist shows they are soft propaganda tools for Australia's geopolitical interests. These video essays "explaining" geopolitics are the contemp version of Buggs Bunny and Donald Duck making fun of Japan and Germany.

Comment by Gigachad 2 hours ago

They are more tolerable as background noise on the TV while you are cooking. Where the length is a feature so you don't have to queue up something else for a while.

Comment by timwis 3 hours ago

Came here to say the same thing. How could the author possibly illustrate the point of the book without at least 4 case studies and a reference to prehistoric humans?

Comment by rhipitr 5 hours ago

I think AI will accelerate this, but I think YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts have splintered the market so much there’s not as much space for mega self-help stars anymore, just a lot of middle class ones.

Comment by rapidfl 4 hours ago

+1 that motivation reel on IG hit so hard...

AI is likely correlation not causation. The generation that resonated with the self-help books has aged out. Short form vids on YT, TT, IG taking mind-share is likely the bigger cause.

Comment by alanb99 2 hours ago

Couple of other anecdotal data points:

1. Guy I know who is an exec coach says that a chatbot can do a lot of what he does. 2. I am absolutely seeing lots of people asking ChatGPT a question and treating its answer as the truth.

So I can well believe that, in an age where you can get a quick answer to anything for free, that the market for books is collapsing.

Having said that, I also suspect that many of these self-help books are effectively a blog post stretched out over hundreds of pages, so maybe a decline in their sales is no bad thing.

Comment by latexr 36 minutes ago

> I also suspect that many of these self-help books are effectively a blog post stretched out over hundreds of pages, so maybe a decline in their sales is no bad thing.

You suspect right. I usually compare them to a pamphlet, but a blog post works too. They’re mostly one core idea padded with interminable stories to illustrate the point. Instead of wasting your money and time on the book, search YouTube for a talk the author has given about it (the more popular the book, the more of the same talk there will be) and watch that. It’ll hit all of the major points.

Comment by jdthedisciple 3 hours ago

When Tim Ferriss (net worth of ~ $100m?) of all people gets back to a humble "find your 1000 true fans" what chance do I have? :')

Comment by k__ 53 minutes ago

As I understood it, they were only a US thing anyway. Because of healthcare issues etc.

Comment by _pdp_ 13 hours ago

> Find your 1,000 True Fans. If you started off doing this well but have meandered, it’s time to revisit. Get very clear on who those 1,000 people are.

Well this is the difficult part. You can 10x the number of followers and still have less than 50 true fans.

On the actual content, I am actually not surprised at all. These AI systems are surprisingly convincing when giving personal advise - for better or worse.

Comment by bryanrasmussen 13 hours ago

depending on the medium one might be better served with a single middling fan with a lot of disposable income, then 10 true with little money available.

Comment by Quarrelsome 10 hours ago

followers is a shit metric that only advertisers care for but they also want like 50-100k bare minimum. You need to find 1k people who are willing to give you money, or go out of their way to advocate for you.

Comment by _pdp_ 7 hours ago

That is a better frame of mind - it is not 1000 true fans but a 1000 customers.

Comment by ryansalsman 7 hours ago

That's the exact idea!

https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

Comment by plagiarist 13 hours ago

With a book you cannot do "that's not what I wanted to read, I'll adjust the prompt."

Comment by chris_money202 11 hours ago

Something not mentioned that links to both LLM training AND drop in book sales... Anna's Archive

Comment by iLoveOncall 10 hours ago

I would be extremely surprised if piracy accounts for any serious dent in the sales of books.

Comment by solid_fuel 10 hours ago

The implication is that the self-help books were scraped from Anna's Archive to train the LLMs, thus the content in the books has been integrated into the LLM and may be regurgitated on command. With the content then being available straight from an LLM, there's no need to buy the books.

Comment by chris_money202 9 hours ago

If this was true, they wouldn't be getting sued and aggressively pursued for takedowns

Comment by jasonfarnon 9 hours ago

" they wouldn't be getting sued and aggressively pursued for takedowns"

I don't think so. That behavior only tells you the modest cost of sending takedown notices/threatening letters is less than the (supposed) lost revenue. Kids I know (I'm a teacher) don't seem at all aware of it when complaining about textbook costs and I kind of vaguely hint they look online for it--nothing like the popularity of napster.

Comment by chris_money202 9 hours ago

To get the DOJ and FBI to move on on this takes a lot more than submitting paperwork, costs a lot more too.

Comment by dartharva 6 hours ago

Suing is a lucrative business in America, so much so that there are entire businesses dedicated to it. It doesn't have to actually protect anything.

Comment by 10 hours ago

Comment by 9 hours ago

Comment by tmaly 5 hours ago

I still buy paper books and audit books even with Anna's Archive.

Comment by haritha-j 1 hour ago

Humans already know what's good for them. Self-help books rarely contain new information. All they contain is motivation, depending on how well it's written. People could substitute it with chatGPT, but its unlikely to provide the same motivation. That's why you could ask chatGPT for the 10 most important lessons in the 4 day workweek, but that won't get you anywhere.

Comment by jhartikainen 1 hour ago

I've read a bunch of what could be considered "self help" and while they often have a lot of fluff, they do have interesting points. Many of them reference actual research studies to back those points.

I just skip the motivational fluff and dig out the useful bits. Makes them very fast reads when you can skip majority of it.

Comment by latexr 28 minutes ago

My recommendation is to find a talk by the author online. It’s free and serves the same purpose.

Comment by digitaltrees 1 hour ago

I disagree. There are a lot of counter intuitive things we’ve learned from psychology, and early childhood development. And I have learned some of them from books or in person training courses that made a difference.

Humans have know blocks for their own well being. Most struggle with probabilities or long term planning. But they are teachable skills.

Comment by throwawaypub 9 hours ago

I work for a large online news publisher, one of the oldest in the US. Our traffic is down 50% in year. We likely won’t survive for much longer.

Comment by digitaltrees 1 hour ago

What do the AI vendors think is going to happen when the content creation ecosystem drops off a cliff? Do they realize they will drop with them?

We are heading for a future where the internet is frozen in time with a cutoff date created when the LLM summaries started.

Comment by Panzer04 8 hours ago

People use LLMs for news?

Comment by kranke155 8 hours ago

I suspect AI summaries are just reducing peoples need to click through on anything, possibly.

Comment by latexr 22 minutes ago

There are entire websites built around that, several have been posted to HN. There was even one (I think real news channel) who experimented with generating fake video of fake anchors to deliver “news”.

Comment by alok-g 5 hours ago

As such I don't. Nevertheless, it explains me what's going on better than the news articles.

Also, I think we have oversold the concept of story-telling. Many news articles start with story telling and take a while before coming to the point.

Comment by adamtaylor_13 7 hours ago

I don't do news at all. If it's important, someone in my life who spends time on social media will tell me.

Comment by SkyPuncher 13 hours ago

This stat is limited to print-books only. He talks about all sorts of other forms of content, but seems to mysteriously miss audio books.

If this source [0] is true then 65% of audiobooks (in 2022) were non-fiction. Likewise that the audiobook industry has grown by nearly 3x since 2022. So, by my math, it's simply that people prefer to listen to self-help books (which matches my own experience).

[0] - https://electroiq.com/stats/audiobook-statistics/

Comment by nfcampos 4 hours ago

He does mention audiobooks, see quoted below

> But what about ebooks and audio? Looking at all formats (print + ebook + audio) for the catalog in 2025, the second half of the year was down ~45% versus the first half.

This compares to 46% on print only

Comment by losteric 13 hours ago

How does this

> If this source [0] is true then 65% of audiobooks (in 2022) were non-fiction. Likewise that the audiobook industry has grown by nearly 3x since a2022.

Lead to

> by my math, it's simply that people prefer to listen to self-help books (which matches my own experience).

I'm not sure I see the math there, when most nonfiction is not self-help books (and an increase in the broader genre says nothing about a specific niche)

Comment by ghaff 11 hours ago

And my experience is that the freebie books available through your local library's online service absolutely pollute the available offerings with self-help and associated types of books.

Comment by EA-3167 11 hours ago

Even more than audiobooks self-help has become the preserve of substack blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels. A lot of the low end of older gen media has moved over to the low end of modern media.

Comment by asdaqopqkq 1 hour ago

LLMs can chew through all the latest in medical research papers, psychological research papers etc. and output better more targeted info for users.

Comment by latexr 32 minutes ago

No, they can’t, because LLMs cannot detect utter nonsensical bullshit.

https://theconversation.com/a-weird-phrase-is-plaguing-scien...

Comment by raziel2701 10 hours ago

In my corner of the internet people started to recommend reading fiction rather than self-help. Books like the count of montecristo for example, where the characters overcome through perseverance, patience and planning.

The criticism of self-help books in my little internet bubble is that if you've read one you've read them all. So why not go for works of fiction that are time-tested and are greatly entertaining and nourishing?

Comment by jaharios 8 hours ago

I like your corner of the internet

Comment by nfcampos 4 hours ago

For what it’s worth, I personally discovered something similar with another category of nonfiction books - economics and business. I read a lot of these circa 10-15 years ago and the rate of new signal id get from each new one eventually became low enough that I stopped reading in that category altogether.

Comment by Daz912 4 hours ago

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Comment by havblue 10 hours ago

I'm going to admit that I tend to hit a brick wall when these books tell me I need to fill out a worksheet if I really want to make a difference. You're telling me I have to do homework now? But ai can give me feedback on my thoughts anyway, directly what I'm interested in, and provide sources, even though it's probably patronizing me? Not a difficult decision.

Comment by latexr 15 minutes ago

I’m not going to defend the self-help industry, but your dismissal made me think of how Craig Ferguson described bad rehabs VS good rehabs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZVWIELHQQY

Yes, of course you need to put in work to enact change. The bigger the change, the more work you need to put in.

That desire for a quick and easy solution to hard problems is exactly what lead to the proliferation of scams.

Comment by throwaway613746 10 hours ago

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Comment by keiferski 1 hour ago

Yes, but only for people that don’t already have an audience.

If Famous Athlete/Entrepreneur writes a self-help type book, people will buy it, because the fame lends legitimacy. Even if the book itself is obviously written by AI.

With an additional caveat: the person needs to have some real, demonstrable authority. Tim Ferris doesn’t really have authority in the sense of “I am a professional athlete” or “I am billionaire startup founder” does. He does have authority as a podcaster and digital products / books creator, but that isn’t what the 4HWW is about.

Comment by edelbitter 4 hours ago

>The original content doesn’t exactly disappear; it just becomes raw material that most people never touch directly.

It does disappear. There is already much less expert knowledge shared after the breakdown of those platforms that used to be so good at encouraging it. Both what the clankers can regurgitate and what humans can find themselves on the internet is increasingly stale and thinned. My GPU can generate fairly good content now.. 2023 content.

Comment by failrate 1 hour ago

It certainly has killed some people looking to it for self help.

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Comment by MollyRealized 10 hours ago

He speaks to three examples: YT videos, podcasts, and newsletters/etc. With YT videos and podcasts, I either yank the transcript and pipe it through whisper.cpp, or with YT videos, I'll use the built-in "Ask [Gemini]" and ask it to summarize.

Comment by AlexKalWork 39 minutes ago

Good riddance, that genre was the slop in literature before AI slop even existed.

Comment by itissid 9 hours ago

Still too narrow a take on what self help techniques are killable by ai. I also think self help as a bunch of life hacks and habits is precisely what’s wrong with the industry writ large. They are based on what sells in a capitalist system targeting the attention economy. Creating scarcity on supply side of attention(work longer) and demand side(addictive apps). Take Atomic Habits, one of the things it says is out of many is making the habit you want to form easy to do, e.g place sneakers and shorts next to your bed to make a habit to run in the morning. It presumes a lot about how exactly habits are actually internalized, retained and how one falls into or out of them. I’ve fallen in and out of such habits even after I did them for a while(months). Techniques are very ripe to disruption because people don’t quite understand or have time to understand or observe their own mental state, so hacks sell because you can do them(presumably) as a monkey would.

It’s not an electronic problem but an human first IRL interface problem. A shining example to the contrary is meditation practice like Vipassana. Saying you can kill that with AI is like saying “Gandalf is here and he explained to you the meaning of life and said now you don’t have to live or learn lessons anymore because you know I can always ask him”. Of course living the actual life is the whole point! It’s also why IRL experiences like classes and communities tend to work better when structured as lived experiences.

If this industry of self help books dies I won’t shed too many tears.

Comment by r0s 9 hours ago

Almost zero readers buy a book based on the title or content alone. They buy Dr.Phil because they saw him on TV and know a bit about who he is. On the other end of the spectrum, there's people buying books because they respect and admire the author's other work.

AI can never touch the human interest angle of authors, the best it can do is hope to trick people temporarily, and that doesn't last long.

Ask yourself, how many "self-help" books are published by Anonymous?

Comment by vova_hn2 13 hours ago

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps?

Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation?

This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video:

- you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can search through a video, but it is much less efficient)

- you can quickly skim through text to find what you need

- text can have proper navigation (chapters etc)

- texts can be linked to each other. Link could lead to a specific part of the text (proper navigation)

- text is much quicker and cheaper to produce

Yet a lot of people make and watch serious educational and informational videos. Why? I don't get it.

Comment by neutronicus 13 hours ago

The right 15 seconds of video can be extremely helpful with household tasks. I'm thinking specifically of super-tactile ones like getting such-and-such panel off the car or appliance so that you can get at the bit you're looking to replace. Those can really be worth a thousand words.

Of course I'd prefer a blog post with many looping, silent 5-15 second gifs and no extraneous like-and-subscribe and life-story-delivery. But c'est la vie.

Comment by mathgeek 11 hours ago

> Of course I'd prefer a blog post with many looping, silent 5-15 second gifs and no extraneous like-and-subscribe and life-story-delivery. But c'est la vie.

This feels like something you could vibe code up (creating the blog posts from YouTube videos). Fascinating times.

Comment by ben_w 11 hours ago

Perhaps, but the recently shared vibe-coded blog posts I've seen on HN have been… not that great.

Wouldn't be surprised if this is viable by next year though.

Between the bloat and bad UI in both modern OSes and modern websites, I'm seriously considering if my next OS will be a command line pointing to an LLM where most web browsing is rendered out in plain text (perhaps LCARS, just for fun?), and any apps that actually need a UI are just-in-time generated as each feature is needed.

After all, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VibeOS already exists.

Comment by odysseus 11 hours ago

Yep, for home improvement and work on cars, I’ll take the video every time. Everything else, if only a video is available, I’ll ask Grok to summarize it so I don’t have to sit through it.

But last weekend I had to remove a trim panel under the hood of my car to extract a dead rodent, and I was wondering how to get those round clips off without breaking them. This video helped: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_rsVDj5s1o&ra=m

The AI summary of the same video explains the exact steps but doesn’t show them actually being done.

Comment by ndiddy 13 hours ago

It's because you get better ad rates on Youtube than if you made a website and posted the information there. Additionally, the current state of the web (Google only exposing SEO blogspam, AI overviews making it so ~60% of searches end without the user clicking on a site) pushes people further and further away from making websites.

Comment by sigmoid10 13 hours ago

Being able to skim, filter and comprehend large amounts of text is much more rare than you might think. More than half of Americans read below sixth grade level and a fifth is functionally illiterate, struggling even with the most basic reading tasks. Videos are the only way for these people to consume any kind of information.

Comment by customguy 11 hours ago

It's the money that comes from getting people to watch ads, generally speaking. If people write an article, even if it blows up all over the internet, nothing happens. If they make a little shitty short that appeals to kids, with a thumbnail where they make a stupid face, they get a a chunk of actual money. I imagine it's real hard to not get influenced by that.

But as understandable as it may be, a clown whose job is to keep people entertained until the ad break can talk about a lot of things, but cannot be something else. This clown talks about math, the other one just rubs the microphone over materials and then says "smash that like button", but they all have the same purpose and can only differentiate themselves by how much engagement they create. The platform is the payload, the content is whatever.

Comment by jpieper 13 hours ago

Isn't it obvious? The creator gets paid much more, in whatever currency they care about:

- ad revenue - youtube algorithm placement - sponsored content - street cred

With an article, if you're lucky google will base their AI overview on it, and the creator gets bupkis.

Comment by RajT88 13 hours ago

It's a mixed bag. When you're (for example) repairing a lawnmower, being able to see parts from different angles and hear what it sounds like is very useful.

When you're trying to repair a Playstation motherboard, you gonna need some photos and text.

Comment by hamdingers 7 hours ago

A lot of people are functionally illiterate. Those people are online now. We have image, video, and sound based social media for them. They send each other videos and voice messages instead of texts.

Not only that, they're creating content for each other. People who can barely compose an email run TikTok accounts and YouTube channels and podcasts with audiences in the millions.

I don't even know if I think this is a bad thing. Sure, their education system failed them, but they need to know how to do things, and they often have information worth sharing. Providing video tutorials almost becomes a question of accessibility (in the a11y sense) in some contexts.

Comment by twright 13 hours ago

One would make a long education video to hold eyeballs longer that can lead to more ad revenue (if that's your goal and your video is sufficiently entertaining).

I've commented about this before [1] but a lot of my simple searches lead to monstrous walls of text with tangential information about the query. The answer is buried well past a simple ctrl-F on the page. It definitely varies for domain though.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830763

Comment by cm2012 11 hours ago

A certain portion of people just prefer learning from video instead of text.

Comment by Apocryphon 11 hours ago

And audio. This also explains the popularity of podcasts, the descendants of a century or so of radio shows.

Comment by brlewis 11 hours ago

I thought the explanation for podcasts was people who drive to and from work, and don't care for current radio shows.

Comment by krapht 11 hours ago

More than just your commute. Any downtime where you are doing a mindless chore is prime podcast time.

Comment by ghaff 10 hours ago

Personally, I don't care for podcasts much around the house. I listen to them much less now that I don't commute.

Comment by seanw444 13 hours ago

There can be a lot to gain from the graphics and audio, depending on the topic.

Comment by mrheosuper 12 hours ago

>Yet a lot of people make and watch serious educational and informational videos

a picture is worth a thousand words. Of course your text article can have pictures, but how can you sure you include all the "useful" pictures. Then there is animation which is impossible to do with static picture.

Comment by egypturnash 8 hours ago

> Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation?

Which one is more likely to result in more ad revenue for you?

Comment by coldtea 13 hours ago

>Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation?

Because increasingly many people wont even stoop to reading an article, but will put on some bs video - even for tutorials

Comment by Larrikin 13 hours ago

I wonder why not write an article for people with correct information. Then have the LLM create 5 articles with slightly wrong information with generated plausible URLs.

Comment by newtwentysix 4 hours ago

Because, money. Nothing else.

Comment by rayiner 13 hours ago

It’s because large fractions of internet users today are functionally illiterate and can’t follow an article.

Comment by eggplantemoji69 13 hours ago

Yeah since most are visual learners. Of course reading is quicker.

Comment by 11 hours ago

Comment by Jtarii 11 hours ago

>Why? I don't get it

Because articles make no money?

Comment by charcircuit 11 hours ago

YouTube handles distribution. Some people search for information by typing their question in the YouTube search box. Whatever article you wrote won't surface there. You have to post to many social media sites if you want to show up everywhere people are looking.

Comment by jeffbee 10 hours ago

Text is not cheaper to produce. Most people can type out a lot of drivel but something worth reading takes practice and talent to write.

Comment by DocTomoe 3 hours ago

None of Ferris' books is younger than 10 years. Used copies are plentiful, hardly a library who has not been touched.

At some time, the market has been satisfied.

Comment by digitaltrees 1 hour ago

That might be true but why the steep drop rather than a slow decline?

Comment by GreenSalem 7 hours ago

Good to see a whole genre of scam artists and their books being displaced.

Comment by lancewiggs 8 hours ago

The rise in sales of GLP-1 products also coincides with the decline in self-help books. Those products are highly effective at delivering some of the hardest self-help outcomes, so why buy a book when you can inject?

Comment by Aboutplants 8 hours ago

AI is probably only a small portion of it. I’m betting most self-help content is consumed via short form video these days and typically done by paid influencers. It’s just shifted from his outdated model

Comment by nfcampos 4 hours ago

I think the same will be true of the ‘popular science’ category of nonfiction

Comment by jdw64 5 hours ago

I wonder if the '1,000 True Fans' concept, which is basically a traditional model, will still work these days. That aside, isn't the hacking style self help genre itself a kind of outdated relic? Honestly, I've read some of this author's books, and they have a distinctly optimistic 2000s to 2010s vibe. Over time, the delivery of knowledge and methodologies changes. Maybe the issue is that the content no longer fits the times.

Looking at the author's books, they're full of healthy living and optimistic narratives. In my view, maybe the problem isn't the old approach itself, but that we need to answer new questions. Like, 'How do I survive in an era where AI takes away jobs?'

And I think the most critical point in this post is this passage:

'What happens when 99% of the rigorously fact checked media is behind a paywall? The short answer: people skip it and ask the AI.'

We use AI for things we don't consider important. If that's the case, I think the key is to convince the public that what I do is something AI cannot replace.

Comment by mrandish 8 hours ago

I think the core problem of most self-help books is that at best, they're usually an article's worth of knowledge and insight stretched to book length for economic reasons.

To be fair, some people probably do benefit from, or at least enjoy, the history, examples and stories used to pad out the length. But in my career I've had to constantly learn new domains to varying depths at high velocity. A good LLM, properly prompted, can be an amazing self-learning tool. Before LLMs I'd often hire an expert, usually a post-doc or professor to spend 2-3 hours one-on-one answering my questions - and those sessions would move at very high-speed, making the investment worth it. For those who are experienced self-learners, an LLM can deliver 60-70% of that value. And, frankly, extracting the relevant knowledge out of the average self-help book is a vastly easier task than that.

Comment by pianopatrick 8 hours ago

Personally for me I realized I could learn everything from YouTube for free so I stopped buying most books, just to save money.

Comment by wps 13 hours ago

I never understood how anyone could write more than 40 pages of “self help”. Especially not for a general audience. All self help boils down to the very foundation of your worldview, all other advice stems from it.

Comment by mrweasel 13 hours ago

All weight loss books, if they are truthful, boils down to: eat healthy, exercise more, everything in moderation. That doesn't really make you money, which is what the author actually want. Other categories are equally padded, or the topic has been sufficiently covered for 2000 years or more.

The whole spiel about "I just want to help others in the same situation" died with the Internet, because for the past 30 years it has been entirely feasible to publish your advice and guidance for for free. The books are just for money and fame.

Comment by beej71 11 hours ago

It depends on the topic, of course. I have a self-help book for my computer science students that talks about the best way to get a computer science bachelor's it weighs in at 64 pages. It's too small to print, but it really doesn't need to be any bigger.

Comment by ghaff 10 hours ago

A lot of non-fiction fits in 50-100 pages or so. Longer than a magazine article. But it's not publishable through a publisher if it's less than 250-300 pages. One of the reasons I probably won't work through a publisher any longer.

Comment by brador 1 hour ago

People have already actioned most best practise health advice. Weight loss done, sleep fixed, healthy eating done, exercise done.

Only mental health and longevity remain outstanding.

Comment by innocentoldguy 11 hours ago

Self-help non-fiction books killed themselves by focusing on entertainment, in the form of amusing anecdotes, rather than substance. Most self-help books could be reduced to a 3-by-5 card without losing any of the core information.

Comment by levocardia 10 hours ago

Conversely: the self-help nonfiction book existed because it was the only practical way to monetize "good advice" or "good ideas" at scale. Now you can do a podcast or a youtube series and try to make money from advertising/affiliates/etc, but for a very long time, "buy my book" was the only game in town

Comment by brlewis 11 hours ago

The article gives anecdotal evidence that combining personal stories with advice in a book is more effective than delivering distilled information.

Comment by beej71 11 hours ago

The author even mentions this. Why watch a 20-minute video when you can just scrub to the 40 seconds you need?

A lot of self-help books fall into this category. But if you go to a publisher and say that you're going to publish a 20-page book, they're going to laugh you out of the room.

Comment by zem 10 hours ago

self help books aren't really my thing, but I have to say I love the guy's attitude in that post.

Comment by shevy-java 2 hours ago

So, probably AI had a significant impact here, but I noticed this myself, a non-AI using person, where I bought fewer books than before. There are many reasons for this, financial ones but also practical ones (don't have to story physical books). As well as lack of time; I need to manage my time better, so I have to skip on reading too many new books until I have finished reading the existing stack. Plus the www also has a lot of information. AI may have been killing more humans here (it is skynet after all), but the underlying problems started being serious way before AI already, in my opinion. Also google search being ruined by Google; it is so useless nowadays.

Comment by dakolli 18 minutes ago

Wow, AI finally did something useful, making Tim Ferris and other grifters obsolete. I actually listened to his most recent podcast and it's wild. These people live in a completely different reality.

Remember, Tim Ferris scammed his audience with NFTs lmfao.

Comment by neves 10 hours ago

Probably podcasts killed them.

Comment by dcdgo 7 hours ago

I recently picked up a book at the airport called "Full Stack Human". Wish I hadn't because every second line has "It's not just about X - It's also about Y!" formatting that screamed LLM generated slop. I'd say it most certainly is dead!

Comment by tverbeure 5 hours ago

Ferris isn’t doing himself any favor by writing “Let that sink in” in this blog post.

Comment by darepublic 8 hours ago

There's a lot of self help YouTube videos.

Comment by delichon 13 hours ago

Fiction books to follow soon? Will kids still sit down and read an assigned book when they can just prompt "generate a movie of Shelley's Frankenstein, faithful to the source, except as required by my_movie_preferences.md". Reading the text may become as rare as learning ancient Greek to read the Odyssey.

Comment by epihelix 7 hours ago

I'd like to think people will continue to read because reading is an inherently pleasurable activity, and because the medium captures nuance that can't be replicated in video.

However, the loss of reading self-help books surely will hurt no-one. It is an ill wind, etc ...

Comment by runako 2 hours ago

This may well happen, but the fraction of people still capable of absorbing original texts will have a tremendous advantage over people who never learned to think.

Comment by malloryerik 6 hours ago

Of course it's possible, but reading and watching fiction feel very different and can you see a way to change that? The word may continue to decline compared to image. But the image is soon to become nearly as cheap and hackable as the word.

Comment by aerhardt 13 hours ago

You say soon but what you just described is still sci-fi as far as I can tell.

Comment by ryandrake 13 hours ago

I wonder, if the technology will actually get to the point where it can AI/Remix up a bunch of TV shows or movies that are as high quality / nonslop as the original, and if that would satisfy me.

Let's say I'm living in the past and think Star Trek TNG and the X-Files was peak TV. If I could just hit enter and generate an in-all-ways-believably-authentic episode, maybe I just wouldn't watch anything else. Would it matter to my brain that real people didn't make the episode if it was indistinguishable from the real thing?

Comment by ben_w 11 hours ago

On a similar vein, I was just thinking of the TNG episode Hollow Pursuits earlier today.

Somehow, this is one of the episodes I never actually watched, but it is interesting to me how often the Trek scripts cover essentially identical ideas to current discussions about AI: Moriarty insisting to Barclay that he was conscious even when his program wasn't running, Pulaski saying Data was just remixing and not actually intelligent, various examples of deep fakes, cyber addiction, AI going weird sometimes while following orders and sometimes just as an emergent bug.

Comment by jaimie 12 hours ago

Nothing, Forever was basically this idea applied to Seinfeld. The video quality was low, but some of the ways it captured the same absurdities as Seinfeld was remarkable at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing,_Forever

Comment by 13 hours ago

Comment by ben_w 11 hours ago

It may not yet be fully automated, and you may have to choose between "cheap and bad or the price of a house and kinda acceptable", but it's definitely possible.

Comment by tliltocatl 13 hours ago

"Self-help nonfiction" have always been a waste of paper. And honestly, most of the time I hear "X was replaced by AI" I find myself thinking "good riddance, but we could drop X altogether and not loose anything of value."

Fiction, on the other hand… Much of fiction's value isn't just the content itself, is that they create a shared language medium. A book might actually be meh (came up with some examples, but then decided to drop it so as not to offend anyone), but the fact that people you talk with have read the same book and understand same references makes reading it valuable. So, it's unlikely to happen, until we delegate all of our communication to AIs, which isn't likely to happen any time soon.

Comment by yakshaving_jgt 10 hours ago

"Luke… I am your father."

"…You're absolutely right!"

Comment by shermantanktop 10 hours ago

c'mon, spoiler alert, jeez

Comment by epihelix 7 hours ago

Spoiler alert: Luke had a father. No cloning with this guy, just a bonafide byproduct of two bad actors and some awkward sand ...

Comment by 7 hours ago

Comment by themafia 9 hours ago

Probably not. And you certainly cannot use a retrospective analysis to answer this question.

What you needed was a survey.

Comment by bitwize 5 hours ago

Nothing of value would be lost if it did. I feel the same way about the OnlyFans economy.

Comment by mwkaufma 11 hours ago

Grifter publishing-slop sector devastated by slop automation.

Comment by tonymet 11 hours ago

Finally AI-skeptics found something positive

Comment by mwkaufma 11 hours ago

Tim Ferris bemoaning AI in self-help books is like John Henry vs. the drilling machine, except for bullshitting instead of driving rail road spikes.

Comment by operatingthetan 13 hours ago

>But looking more closely, Self-help had the steepest subcategory decline, with units down 26.3% year-over-year. Only two of 16 subcategories—crafts/hobbies/antiques/games and religion—grew at all (9.6% and 1.6%, respectively). The exceptions alone could make an interesting blog post for another time.

Self help being generally part of a larger grift pipeline for authors (for selling overpriced courses, seminars, retreats, infoproducts etc.), this is an actual positive silver lining for AI in society.

Comment by submeta 13 hours ago

I suspect AI is replacing my need for productivity content much faster than it’s replacing my need for books.

I read fewer blog posts, fewer newsletters, fewer “10 lessons from…” articles, and fewer productivity videos than I did three years ago.

But I still buy books.

The first casualties seem to be the intermediaries, not necessarily the original sources.

Comment by the_lonely_phon 11 hours ago

This is me too. Just finished the latest Dungeon Crawler Carl book, bought on day 1. Have completely replaced Google, stackoverflow, medium, digital ocean documentation, etc. Only HN remains and honestly it’s less to keep my finger on the pulse and more habit than anything these days. Went from a large part of my consumption to zero visits since I got Claude code.

Makes me wonder what’s going to happen to AI’s results if all these content streams dry up.

Comment by maxclark 5 hours ago

The average non fiction book is 200 pages, can be summarized in under 10, and is repackaging someone else’s ideas

Literary slop being replaced with AI

Comment by l23k4 1 hour ago

I love books, but I could never understand self-help nonfiction books. What's the point? Just about any idea which these books may communicate can be better communicated through fiction.

There's no life lessons you'll learn reading self help-books that you won't get by just reading the classics.

Comment by aussieguy1234 8 hours ago

Hardly. I've read several good ones during the AI era and I'm still reading them.

However, that doesn't mean AI is useless for this type of thing. Its very, very good at acting as an "expert" to answer questions you may have after reading the book.

I'm also in an actual informal bookclub with a few friends. It started in the AI era, all nonfiction books and is still going strong.

Depending on the model and size of the book, its also possible to load the entire book into the context window and ask questions.

Comment by Finnucane 15 hours ago

Makes sense. Self-help books are kinda the human slop of the publishing business. Easily replaced by AI slop? Probably.

Comment by cjs_ac 14 hours ago

To be (slightly) more charitable to the genre and to AI, self-help books are a blog post's worth of content padded out to look worthy of the sticker price, so LLMs provide a fair bit of value in extracting the signal from the noise (assuming they do it accurately).

Comment by xracy 13 hours ago

also assuming there's signal in that noise...

Comment by sublinear 10 hours ago

I'm more curious how Publisher's Weekly defines "sales" in this era of subscription plans (e.g. Kindle Unlimited).

Some of this probably isn't just "AI" but the quantified/journaled lifestyle trends. Do Oura rings and Apple watches impact self help as much as basic health questions on Google and routine doctor visits?

It feels more like a broader information abundance and a more educated consumer base that started over at least a decade ago. AI's impact is hard to measure since it's just the hot feature resting atop existing tech. It certainly did none of the heavy lifting to nudge people this direction.

Comment by keybored 11 hours ago

> [the numbers]

> Let that sink in for a minute.

Jesus Christ. Here is how AI relates to me—ooh, with suspense-driving one-sentence paragraphs and reflective commandments. Come on, in Q2 2026 this is still a thing?

The self-involved industry is in shambles.

> What’s actually going on?

Need the meander headlines. I told you what is going on. Now. Let me interpret what I just wrote for you.

It would be just boring if self-help books were down because people believe less in astrology and affirmations or something. Couldn’t write about the Zeitgeist that way.

---

I’m not just a cynic. I lived a former life as well. And self-help is something ranging from entertainment to fantasy to small chance of personal transformation. And for books, it’s a cheap hobby compared to one-on-one pscyhology. So would it make sense to replace that with a language soup? Not really. The idiosyncracy is the whole point, jesus.

People might get taken in by it. That doesn’t mean that it will work in the long run.

Comment by josefritzishere 13 hours ago

Betteridge's law of headlines applies. "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." Why would anyone ask AI?

Comment by anovikov 3 hours ago

"AI has become good enough at writing bullshit at scale that many bullshit industries are struggling"

Comment by vova_hn2 13 hours ago

> What happens when 99% of the rigorously fact-checked media is behind a paywall? The short answer: people skip it and ask the AI.

Perhaps there is a business opportunity for a "rigorously fact-checked" chatbot? You can test chatbot to see if it gives "correct" (according to the author's opinion) answers on a topic of your choice and fix errors through prompt engineering, RAG (or other "memory" techniques), fine-tuning the base model if previous two approaches didn't work.

You can also probably teach it to use your own voice instead of dreaded LLM-isms, to make it sound less like typical AI-slop. This potentially can attract people, who are annoyed by the typical AI voice.

Perhaps, people who wrote self-help books should craft bespoke, custom-made chatbots instead?

Comment by Panzer04 8 hours ago

I think the more salient points for the paywalls is people want pay once access everything, instead of piecemeal. I would certainly be happy to subscribe to "news" in general, but not a dozen different providers for one article apiece.

Comment by dvh 14 hours ago

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

Comment by threetonesun 13 hours ago

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance comes to mind, I suppose also the business-parable style books like Who Moved My Cheese?.

Comment by Insanity 13 hours ago

If you count Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, almost any fiction book with a philosophical angle would fit that description.

Or even books like “The Phoenix(/Unicorn) Project”.

Comment by stevenwoo 8 hours ago

I had trouble finishing Zen and the Art because my recollection is he drones on and on about the philosophy after the initial set up. The story disappeared. I felt kind of being had because I remember being intrigued by the title in a used bookshop as a teenager and buying it (this was before the internet) so my viewpoint is biased by that. My college philosophy textbooks managed to be more interesting and deeper than Zen, even a book about Aurelius was more interesting to me.

Comment by threetonesun 13 hours ago

I wouldn't say any fictional book with a philosophical angle fits, but ones that could have been written as non-fiction but for the purposes of getting the point across weren't. Phoenix/Unicorn Project are good examples!

Comment by comrade1234 13 hours ago

Pretty much all of them.

Comment by tonymet 11 hours ago

perhaps they made the fiction/non-fiction Freudian slip? Here I was thinking "Are there any non-fiction (actually true) self help books?"

Comment by burkaman 13 hours ago

I've never read it but I think Atlas Shrugged might qualify. I don't think I've ever heard anyone praise the plot or talk about it as a novel, instead people who liked it say it changed their life, changed how they view themselves, etc.

Comment by a-french-anon 1 hour ago

Huh, if this is what we're talking about, I think Starship Troopers may qualify.

Comment by PaulHoule 13 hours ago

I thought it was pretty well paced as a novel until it got to John Galt's big speech which seemed childishly self-indulgent and then after that it goes to hell. The novel is about 1200 pages and it's pretty amazing that it held my attention for the first 800 because I've rarely been able to enjoy a novel for that long.

Comment by citizenpaul 13 hours ago

I think it appeals to people with toxic "lone wolf" mentality.

Comment by tiahura 13 hours ago

The other, of course, involves orcs.

Comment by randthrowaway3 10 hours ago

as a lite-BDSM wish fulfillment romance novel, it's quite compelling. better plotted and written than much successful romantasy today. the whole plot is about a bunch of hot rich guys fighting over who gets to dom the self-insert female protagonist.

there's another fantasy aspect, which is discovering your sense of alienation from family and society is really because you're part of a special but oppressed group and won't admit it to yourself, and once you embrace your identity you can find fulfillment, love, and community.

now, in this case, the repressed identity is "capitalist", which is a peculiar way of looking at the world. but if you ignore this, the emotional beats of the story (finding yourself, coming out, found family) also work for the LGBT experience, even perhaps neurodivergence. I think this is why so many confused teenagers find themselves very moved by the book and are later embarrassed to admit it.

on the whole, it's not high literature but competently executed, the only really stupid thing about it is Objectivism.

Comment by RobotToaster 13 hours ago

The art of war is probably fictional.

Comment by mcphage 12 hours ago

“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho qualifies.

Comment by 14 hours ago

Comment by deadbabe 13 hours ago

Yes! plenty of them: The Secret, The 4-hour Work Week, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, etc…

Comment by PaulHoule 13 hours ago

I think there are some good things in the 4-hour Work Week but the concept as a whole is problematic: e.g. Tim Ferris himself has more like a 400-hour work week. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a right wing scam. There is a psychotechnology that people call "magic" but The Secret and Think and Grow Rich won't teach you it.

Comment by RajT88 13 hours ago

> Rich Dad Poor Dad is a right wing scam.

I think he was actually saying that by calling it fiction, lol.

Comment by PaulHoule 13 hours ago

Yeah, but it's the worst of the four. I remember his advice that you should buy a rental property which is cashflow positive after the mortgage payment on day one. (As opposed to profitable considering that you're building equity)

These were just not on the market except for one that had 8 section 8 apartments and would have driven me crazy trying to manage as a bleeding heart who cares about people.

Comment by cindyllm 11 hours ago

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Comment by plagiarist 12 hours ago

I liked Ferris explaining that you can validate a market exists by serving ads pretending you already have a product. What a scumbag. Isn't the rest of the book just drop shipping and selling supplements with high margins? I recall snippets of a manual for unethical but mostly legal small business between stories of people making money on such practices.

Comment by PaulHoule 12 hours ago

I like his description of how you could just call up an expert on the phone and often get a quick answer to any question they can answer quickly. I'd learned that one myself.

Like it or not a lot of successful businesses have some bodies buried somewhere, particularly those that have been successful in two-sided markets such as online communities. There have been legendary successes in marketing enterprise software that didn't quite exist but I can say it didn't work when I tried it.

Comment by yieldcrv 11 hours ago

everyone has their own contribution to this observation

but how is everyone missing the enormous amount of self published slop released since 2022?

that stuff actually is selling, diluting the interest in the rest

its the law of diminishing returns

this may coincide with people also realizing they bought slop, as well as all the other distractions and ways of consuming that people identified

but just like software is experiencing this year, the same has been occurring in writing for 4 years

Comment by uwagar 7 hours ago

author says:

Before we dive into my dirty laundry,

dude, why would i want to dive into your dirty laundry man?

Comment by phantasmat 1 hour ago

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Comment by jpease 3 hours ago

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Comment by mrbonner 4 hours ago

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Comment by MagicMoonlight 2 hours ago

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Comment by Nition 7 hours ago

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Comment by formvoltron 13 hours ago

has bruv updated said book to include tips on using AI to automate?

Comment by throwaw12 10 hours ago

unfortunately, as a reader, I am not buying any books post-ChatGPT era. Author maybe did their best, but it anyways feels like I will be buying ChatGPT's opinion

Comment by stuaxo 1 hour ago

How can you read LLM generated text, it makes me feel nausious ?

The same phrases and patterns repeated over and over again, blech.

Comment by throwaw12 43 minutes ago

> How can you read LLM generated text

I am not reading most things post-ChatGPT era (books, articles, and even Jira tickets), by habit I am looking at the dates (hopefully they are correct) and then adjusting my effort level accordingly, anything post-ChatGPT depending on the blog author I send to summarization, if I really trust and know the author then I read their article.

Comment by daytonix 9 hours ago

"Self-help" readers are probably moving from self-help books to llms because they give them the shallow "fix my life" and "get rich quick" answers they want at a faster rate. Now the redpillers have to think even less about why they are such losers.

Obviously this is mean but I do think "self-help" has been incredibly inflated by these people who think there are some sort of magic answers out there to solve everything about their life. And those people are now moving to short form redpill content and / or llms that gas them up.