Olvasd jobbá az életed! A magyar self-help kultúra helyzete a könyvpiac tükrében
Read your Life Better! The State of Hungarian Self-help Culture in Light of the Publishing Industry

Summary/Abstract: During the past two decades self-help literature has become a publishing success in Hungary – much like in the rest of the world. While books on personal success, and the idea that one’s life can be improved by cumulating suffi cient information on how to improve it, have become an integral part of popular culture, phrases describing the genre still seem to have a negative overtone: the category of self-help is virtually non-existent in the Hungarian book publishing and trading industry. This paper aims to: First, present diff erent approaches of a number of scholars to defi ning the genre. Second, using distant reading as a research method, analyzing a sample of 133 self-help books regarding book titles and subjects (subject categories) implied by said titles, the characters of book series included in the sample, and the mission statements of included publishing houses. Third, by examining the self-help book display strategies in one of the branches of the biggest Hungarian book distributor chain, spot anomalies and inconsistencies as a result of self-help not existing as an individual genre in book stores or in the mind of readers.

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