What the $%@ have you wrought, Mark Manson?

Here at BookNet Canada headquarters, we've lately noticed that a large number of bestselling Self-Help books have a swear word in the title. This past week, four of the top 10 bestselling books in the Self-Help category, looking at print unit sales in the Canadian English-language trade market, had swear words in the title. Is this a new thing? Being BookNet, we decided to use SalesData to dig deeper and investigate the history of Self-Help print books with swear words in the title to see whether there has actually been an increase over the past couple of years.

How many Self-Help books have a swear in the title?

Looking at print unit sales in the Canadian English-language trade book market, we pulled the 100 top-selling ISBNs with the BISAC subject code Self-Help for each year from 2016 to the end of June 2019. We looked at those four lists and, for each year, counted how many titles had some sort of swear word, or swear-adjacent word like "sh*t," "badass," "bleep," or grawlixes (e.g., #@%!).

Of the 400 top-selling ISBNs we looked at, only 42 of them had swear words in the title (11%). There was a significant jump in the amount of these books from 2016 to 2017, a slight increase from 2017 to 2018, and another large increase from 2018 to the first six months of 2019. (Of note: The first edition of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was published in September 2016). Overall, it bears out that there has been an increase over the past few years for these types of Self-Help titles.

Top-selling Self-Help ISBNs with a swear word in the title: January 2016 to June 2019

* Bestsellers from January to June 2019

Which $%@ Self-Help books are the bestsellers?

As we were analyzing these bestselling titles, we realized that many of them were reappearing on the lists from year to year. When we removed duplicate ISBNs from the list of 400 bestsellers, we found that there were 21 unique ISBNs accounting for all instances of books with swear words in their titles.

What are those 21 ISBNs, you ask? We're pretty sure you won't be surprised by the top five (especially since the title of this post may have already spoiled some of the surprise): Three of the top five titles are by Mark Manson: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Everything Is F*cked, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep.

Top-selling Self-Help ISBNs with a swear word in the title: January 2016 to June 2019

1. You Are a Badass® by Jen Sincero (9780762447695)

2. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (9780062457714)

3. Everything Is F*cked by Mark Manson (9780062888464)

4. Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop (9780062803832)

5. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep by Mark Manson (9780062851338)

6. Calm the F*ck Down by Sarah Knight,(9780316529150)

7. Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight (9780316505079)

8. You Are a Badass Every Day by Jen Sincero (9780525561644)

9. Let That Sh*t Go by Kate Petriw and Nina Purewal (9781443457675)

10. You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero (9780735223134)

11. Everything Is #@%!ed by Mark Manson (9780062909701)

12. Where's My F**king Unicorn? by Michelle Gordon (9781781453087)

13. Stop Doing That Sh*t by Gary John Bishop (9780062945884)

14. F*ck Feelings by Michael I. Bennett and Sarah Bennett (9781476789996)

15. F**K It by John C. Parkin (9781401947477)

16. You Are a Badass Talking Button by Jen Sincero (9780762460083)

17. Stop Doing That $#!% Merch Ed by Gary John Bishop (9780062950147)

18. The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t by Fabrice Midal (9780316478212)

19. Fucking Awesome Coloring Book by Calligraphuck (9781452159829)

20. I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck by John Kim (9780062914576)

21. How to Get Sh*t Done by Erin Falconer (9781501165801)

Two thirds (71%) were among the 100 bestselling Self-Help books the same year they were published. The ISBNs in the remaining third were published within one to three years of their time spent on a top 100 list. The exception is the first edition of Jen Sincero's You Are a Badass®, which was published in April 2013 and made all the bestseller lists we looked at for this post.

Many of these titles are also relatively new. As we can see in the graph below, the majority of the 21 ISBNs were published in the first six months of 2019 (from January to June), followed by those published in 2016 and 2017 (tied), and then in 2018. 

Publication years for the 21 top-selling Self-Help ISBNs with a swear word in the title

* Published between January and June 2019

Do Self-Help books with a swear word in the title sell more than books without?

Now that we've sated our curiosity about the specific bestselling Self-Help books, let's find out if Self-Help books with swear words in the title sell more than those without. To determine this, we pulled a new list of the 100 bestselling Self-Help ISBNs from 2016 to the end of June 2019 (so, not the 400 bestsellers we looked at above). We separated the ISBNs with a swear word in the title (14) from those without (86). The graph below shows the total print unit sales for each of those two categories. 

Print unit sales for the 100 bestselling Self-Help ISBNs with a swear word in the title vs. those without: January 2016 to June 2019

We can see that sales for the bestselling Self-Help books with a swear word in the title made up a large percentage of sales, especially given their small numbers. Though books with a swear word in the title made up only 14% of the top 100 ISBNs, they accounted for 48% of sales at their peak, as we can see in the graph below.

Percentage of print unit sales for ISBNs with a swear word in the title out of all sales for top 100 Self-Help books: January 2016 to June 2019

Mark Manson: A case study

Mark Manson re-published his original The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck book as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep in 2017. While we did consider The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep to be a book with a swear word in the title for the above analyses, since it's obviously used as a substitute, we're considering it as one without for this case study. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck was published in both paperback and hardcover on Sept. 13, 2016 and sales for both editions were combined in the graph below. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep was published in paperback about a year later on Nov. 28, 2017. 

Print unit sales for Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep: January 2016 to June 2019

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the combined sales for the hardcover and paperback editions of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck outsold The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep. However, the paperback edition of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep sold more units than the hardcover version of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. 

What the $%@ you have wrought, Mark Manson? The rise of Self-Help books with swears in the title: A look at their sales in Canada.
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Swearing in Self-Help pays off

To recap: Having a swear word, or swear-adjacent word, in the title of a Self-Help book is trending up. The 21 swear-word bestsellers from January 2016 to June 2019 represent a sh*t ton of sales in the Self-Help category. Thank you, SalesData, for proving our hypothesis correct. 

Are you a publisher, retailer, or librarian who wants to see more data like this? Check out SalesData, the sales tracking service for the Canadian English-language trade book market. If you’re already a subscriber and want to see how a collection of titles compares over weeks or quarters, check out the Multi-ISBN Report. If you want to see the top-selling titles for a specific author or in a certain category, see how to run a Bestseller Report. 

If you still have questions, or want SalesData training, contact us!