This year’s best-selling genre is self-help books, particularly those with encouraging language, data from two online book retailers showed.
Online book retailer books.com.tw said a best-seller list published by Eslite on Saturday matched their findings that books focused on self-help and positive reinforcement are gaining popularity.
The trend reflects the increasing pressures of social and work environments, the retailer said.
However, books focused on positivity and romance were popular when books.com.tw was founded a few years ago, whereas those that cut to the source of a persons pain are more popular now, it said.
These books, which are best-sellers, give people a release from life’s pressures, the retailer added.
Books about romantic, parent-child or workplace relationships are among the best-sellers, it said, citing the three-year best-selling book series The Courage to be Disliked (被討厭的勇氣), and former six-month best-seller Emotional Blackmail (情緒勒索), which at its peak sold more than 10,000 copies in a month.
The best-selling Your Kindheartedness Must Have a Sharp Edge (你的善良必須有點鋒芒) represents an emerging trend among positive encouragement books, it said.
Among Eslite’s top 10 best-selling books for the year, four encourage readers to resist people-pleasing, the book retailer said, adding that “emotional blackmail” is this year’s buzzword in psychology books.
Emotional Blackmail, written by psychiatrist Chou Muer (周慕姿), discusses how to avoid emotional blackmail and encourages readers to set boundaries while being kindhearted, Eslite said.
Similarly, Your Kindheartedness Must Have a Sharp Edge by Mu Yan-ko (慕顏歌) discusses how to balance ones needs with others’ requests, it said.
“Among this year’s best-sellers, aside from learning how not be controlled by others and how to let the ego prevail, readers are drawn to books about psychological techniques to win back their happiness,” Eslite said, citing The Dark Psychology of Bending Others to Your Will (隨心所欲操控人心的暗黑心理學) and The Crafty Psychology of the Good-Guy Manager (好人主管的狡猾心理學).
These best-sellers teach readers how to find benefit in various interpersonal relationships, the retailer said.
This year’s no. 3 best-seller is Fang Ssu-chi’s First Love Paradise (房思琪的初戀樂園) by Lin Yi-han (林奕含), who committed suicide in April.
The Home Where a Mermaid is Fast Asleep (人魚沉睡的家) by Japanese author Keigo Higashino is also a top seller this year and discusses whether a person who is declared medically brain dead should be considered “dead.”
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