The world’s bestselling book genre is self-help, taking its name from the book titled Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles. Drawing primarily from the social sciences of business, education, psychology and psychotherapy, there is also a place for physical health self-help books, although the genre description may be subtly shifting into ‘how to’.
Despite the instructive and educative nature of the physiotherapy profession, the publication of self-help or how-to books by physiotherapists has been remarkably low in both number and reach. Three significant exceptions are Robin McKenzie’s Treat Your Own Back, Sarah Key’s Back Sufferers’ Bible, and Dinah Bradley and Tania Clifton-Smith’s books on breathing.
Treat Your Own back, first published in 1980, was an extension of the self-management strategy of the McKenzie Method. The book is currently in its ninth edition, having been translated into nearly twenty languages, with millions of copies sold worldwide. The book was a progenitor of other books in the Treat Your Own series, as well as related postural products.
Coming to the market at the same time as the rise of primary contact status and private practice physiotherapy, the McKenzie books and products were embraced by entrepreneurial practice owners who on-sold them directly to their patients, thereby contributing to sales and distribution success.
Key’s self-help book publication began in 1986 and she has produced multiple self-help books, videos and products also for the self treatment of back pain. Her success has been assisted with Royal endorsement, having treated the Queen of England and her son the Prince of Wales writing the foreword to Key’s first book.
Bradley and Clifton-Smith’s books took breathing training out of the hospital ward and into people’s everyday lives. The authors focused on breathing pattern disorders in working-age people, athletes, people with low-grade anxiety and depression, and others, and have been republished multiple times.
Description provided by Glenn Ruscoe of Australia and Dave Nicholls of New Zealand
