Love Thy Self-Help
Love Thy Self-Help Give us your tired (of being overweight), your hungry (for success), your poor (after a nasty divorce), your teeming masses yearning to be free (of their fears and insecurities), and show them the way to Dallas, where authors like Dr. Phil McGraw have answers for every problem and superagent Jan Miller knows how to sell their books to America.
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Robbins' book, Unlimited Power, was published in 1986, sold more than 100,000 copies in three months, and went to the top of the New York Times's advice-and-how-to best-seller list. Soon Miller was trolling the waters for other people who she felt had interesting things to say that could be turned into self-help books. She flew to Provo, Utah, to meet Stephen Covey, a management professor at Brigham Young University who had written his dissertation on the habits of effective managers. She sold a reworked version of the dissertation to Simon and Schuster. The sale was small—just about $100,000—but The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People too hit the best-seller lists. (To date, that single book has sold, according to Covey's organization, some 13 million copies.)
Miller realized she didn't have to travel far at all to find authors. She ran across a Southern Methodist University economics professor, Ravi Batra, who wanted to prepare Americans for what he guaranteed was an upcoming stock market crash. That book, The Great Depression of 1990, became a New York Times best-seller. When Asahina mentioned to Miller that he would like to find a female version of Tony Robbins, she showed up in New York with the spiky-haired, bleached-blond owner of an exercise studio in Dallas named Susan Powter. In her rapid-fire, aggressive speaking style, Powter told the editors her personal story about shrinking from 260 pounds to a size 4, and then she began ranting about how women were being misled by the diet industry and American institutions in general. To Asahina, Powter seemed an unlikely self-help star. But because he trusted Miller, he gave Powter a contract for a book. When it was published in 1993, Stop the Insanity! became an instant success. By the mid-nineties, Miller's agency was bringing in about $12 million a year in revenues. Her authors had produced more than twenty advice and how-to best-sellers, and at one point, four of the five top books on the Times's list had been written by Miller authors.
She had some misses along the way. She went to Hawaii to hear John Gray, who was doing relationship seminars and wanted her to represent him. She didn't get his message, which was her loss. Gray's book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus turned out to be one of the bigger self-help sellers of the past decade. Powter's follow-up books didn't sell. Yet for every author who faltered, at least two or three more arrived. Miller would meet people at cocktail parties or lunches and tell them they ought to be writing books. She even reached into her personal circle of friends for authors. Iris Krasnow, who used to sit by the pool with her, began writing self-help books for women on such topics as motherhood and marriage. In the shopping center where Miller works, she came across a personal trainer and gym owner (Larry North), a yoga instructor (Glenda Twining), and a psychologist (Dr. David Zelman), all of whom ended up writing self-help books that her agency sold to publishers. After reading a Texas Monthly story I wrote about Jinger Heath, the chairman of a Dallas cosmetics company, Miller called her up, introduced herself, took Heath to New York, told publishers that Heath had the ability to motivate millions of bored housewives, and got her a contract in the high six figures to write a self-help book called Positively You!
Just knowing that Miller was in Dallas inspired other Dallasites to fulfill their dreams of writing self-help books. While going through a divorce, a former Dallas model and advertising executive named Susan Jones Knape decided women needed a book on how to make their lives more manageable financially. She wrote the book in her spare time, arrived at Miller's office in a glamorous new purple suit she had bought on sale at Stanley Korshak, and handed one of Miller's staff the manuscript, which was wrapped in a neat package with a bow. McGraw-Hill will be publishing her book, The Money Rules: Fifty Ways Savvy Women Can Make More, Save More, and Have More!, in December.
THE ONE DALLAS WRITER MILLER most desperately wanted to represent was Dr. Phil. Like everyone else who saw Dr. Phil on his first Oprah appearances, she was mesmerized by his big Texas accent and his clear disdain for what he called "touchy-feely psychology." When one guest on the show said she didn't want to have sex with her husband because she was afraid their daughter might barge in, Dr. Phil interrupted and snorted, "Put a cowbell on her!" Miller did not have to be told that he was the perfect antidote to that irritating self-help trend in which people were encouraged to believe that they were victims of their "dysfunctional families" and that the path to happiness was through finding their "inner child."
Although McGraw had been interested in what he likes to call "human functioning" since the early seventies, when he began studying psychology at Midwestern State University, in Wichita Falls (he later received a master's and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of North Texas, in Denton), he told me he had never thought about writing a self-help book until Oprah brought up the idea. "I don't think I had ever read one of those damn things," he said.
Initially, he didn't want an agent: He had negotiated the sales of his first two books through a lawyer. (Full disclosure: The second of the two books,Relationship Rescue, I helped edit.) But in 2001 he went with Miller because he needed someone to watch over his rapidly burgeoning book empire. "I had every agent in the country pounding on my door, most of them from New York," he said. "When I asked publishers which agent they liked the most—which one they worked with who was not a snake—Jan was on everybody's shortlist."
Miller restructured her agency to focus on Dr. Phil—one staffer, Shannon Miser-Marven, works almost exclusively on Dr. Phil's books—and the partnership has already caused a huge amount of New York buzz. Although Miller and Dr. Phil would not comment on the particulars of their book deals, one source close to the negotiations said that when Miller discussed Dr. Phil's upcoming weight-loss book with Simon and Schuster, she made it clear that he was going to take nothing less than $10 million. (The biggest advances Miller had previously received for her top clients, Covey and Robbins, reportedly were in the $5 million range.) The Simon and Schuster editors swallowed and offered $8 million. Absolutely not, Miller said. Ten million or nothing. Simon and Schuster finally agreed.
When I asked Dominick Anfuso, of Simon and Schuster, if readers will really care about one more weight-loss book, he seemed startled that I would even ask the question. "Do you really not understand the effect Phil has on people?" he asked. "Whenever Phil devotes one of his talk shows to weight loss, the ratings take off. People are desperate for real answers—for permanent answers—and Phil's going to provide them."
What those answers are remains to be seen. (Simon and Schuster is keeping the book under tight wraps until this month's release.) But even if critics complain that Dr. Phil is saying nothing more than has been said in other weight-loss books, the truth of the matter is that he has such a huge audience that his book will undoubtedly become an instant best-seller. Still the classic Dallas overachiever—he works seven days a week, often late into the night, on both his talk show and trial-strategy business—Dr. Phil already knows what his fifth book will be, the subject of which he would not tell me. And he has ideas for a sixth and a seventh. "Listen," he said, "people go to school to read and write and add, but they are never given any education on how to manage and resolve their emotions, how to pick a partner for life, or how to deal with other people. And when you realize what a small percentage of the population ever goes to therapy, then you realize there is a huge need out there. People are hungry to make something of their lives. They want some direction—and frankly, I can't think of any better use of my time than providing some of that direction."
AND WHAT HAPPENS IF MCGRAW finally tires of providing that direction and returns to his old life? Jan Miller, of course, will be waiting with another new author to take his place. In fact, she already has one in development: McGraw's older son, Jay, a 24-year-old SMU law student who has already published a couple of books with Simon and Schuster teaching teens how they can make their lives better. She has as many personal-development experts as there are brands of toothpaste, all of them churning out their books: the literature of possibility. Every day that I walked into her office this summer, the phones were always ringing and her six staffers were too busy to go out to lunch. I watched one of them, agent Michael Broussard, place a call to Jennifer Lopez's trainer to talk about a fitness book, then take another call from a representative for Paula Abdul, the more encouraging of the hosts on the Fox network talent show American Idol, to discuss a book idea tentatively titled "The Positive No." When he was finished with the call, he walked into Miller's office to give her an update.
"I think they're going to say yes on the "No" book," he said.
"Yes!" said a delighted Miller. As Broussard walked out, in walked another would-be author from Dallas, Laurel Barrett, a pretty former real estate broker who had spent the past two years traveling around the globe, interviewing various people who she believed were making a difference in the world, from a couple who funded an orphanage in India to the retired chairman of Home Depot, who was giving away much of his money to charity. She told Miller that she and an associate wanted to do a book about these people titled "Heroes for Humanity: Empower! Inspire!"
Although Miller was not sure the book would sell, she smiled brightly and said, "I cannot tell you how impressed I am with your commitment. Let's see what we can do." Barrett walked out of the office beaming.
When I asked Miller if the day would come when she would get tired of her work, she grinned. "I'm not sure I could ever leave," she said. "It's too much fun making the deals. It's just so rewarding to help others make their dreams come true."
I was going to tell Miller that such a statement would be perfect for a self-help book and that maybe she ought to write one herself. But she had already picked up the phone to take another call.
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