Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Stories of Love New Design

MORE THAN 500,000,000 COPIES SOLD. A PHENOMENON IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLISHING. THE BEST-SELLING SERIES IN THE WORLD. SUCCESS STORY 1993: A book that no one wanted to publish / #1 New York Times Bestseller / 20,000 copies sold. 2003: +180 new books in the series / Bestseller series / 80,000 copies sold. 2013: About 250 books in the series / The best-selling series in history / More than 500,000,000 copies sold. HOW IT ALL STARTED The story of the creation of the book “Chicken Soup” is as inspiring as the little stories it contains. Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen, both popular motivational speakers, loved to “spice up” their performances with a couple of inspirational stories. After the seminars, many approached them: “Where can I find that story about the girl scout? I would buy a book for her son,” “And that story about the guy and the puppy – can it be read somewhere?” For a year, Canfield and Hansen recorded stories that they had experienced or heard from acquaintances, and when they gathered 101, they sent them out to publishers. They received 144 rejections. Then Jack and Mark decided to find buyers before the book was published, hoping to persuade the publishers. They told their acquaintances and seminar attendees about it and asked everyone interested to write a pledge to buy the future book. When they gathered more than 20,000 pledges, Jack and Mark approached the publishers again. The book was printed, and everyone who had made a promise bought it. And then... sales stopped. Jack and Mark didn’t want to give up. They had a goal – to sell 1.5 million copies in 1.5 years. Then they came up with the “Rule of Five”: to take five active steps every day to promote and sell the book. From that moment on, Canfield and Hansen sent out 5 copies daily to journalists, Hollywood stars, made 5 calls to company executives offering to gift books to employees. As a result, in 1.5 years