World Mental Health Day: Turning pages for self-help

The daily hassles of #WFH made Naman Gautam, a Delhi-based cybersecurity professional, move away from his usual reads — thrillers and science picks. “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life was a breath of fresh air and made me think about my Ikigai, or the reason of being. I have since added more books on happiness, mental peace to my to-be-read list,” he says.

Life during the pandemic has influenced reading habits of many. Today, on World Mental Health Day, we look at how genres such as self-help and spirituality became popular during the lockdown, and continue to be in demand in the unlock phase.

“We always had a strong self-help list. Now, it’s even more important to get the best voices from self-help, mind, body and spirit to reach out to larger audiences. The pandemic threw up conversations on mental health, and we saw more on this subject from authors and readers alike,” says Milee Aishwarya, publisher at Penguin.

As everyone veered towards the unlock phase, sales of self-help books continued to go strong. “Self-help books tend to be cosy and often thought-provoking. We looked at tapping into trends such as wellness, self-care and spirituality; all of which come under the umbrella of self-help,” shares Bushra Ahmed, commissioning editor at HarperCollins India.

It is believed people got time to research and thus, took to writing more on subjects such as mental health. “Readers utilised those periods of isolation to upgrade, update themselves,” says Trisha De Niyogi from Niyogi Books, adding that people also alternated between genres from time to time. “Now, we’re observing significant attention towards biographies and books read essentially to enhance knowledge. Demand for food and health-centric books has also risen,” she adds. Bookstores, too, mirror this reading trend. “There has been a 9% increase in sales of new-age books. During unlock, many of our patrons were going through a spectrum of emotions, and we could see that in their book requests. Those working from home wanted to engage in some good reads. Ikigai, The Alchemist, The Heartfulness Way, Life’s Amazing Secrets, etc. were really popular,” informs Swagat Sengupta from Oxford Bookstores, which was delivering books home during the lockdown.

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