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It sold 30M copies, not 15M

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Changing it back from 15M to 30M ...

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This 2011 NYT article suggests it sold 30M, the wikipedia article cites 15M:

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/books/books-of-the-times-classic-advice-please-leave-well-enough-alone.html

"Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which turns 75 this year, has sold more than 30 million copies and continues to be a best seller."

And Time in 2011:

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2086680_2086683_2087696,00.html

"By Andrea Sachs Tuesday, Aug. 09, 2011
...But Dale Carnegie was a wizard when it came to making the public like him. Besides buying more than 30 million copies worldwide of his Depression-era book, they broke down the doors of his educational programs, which also promised professional success and happiness. "

Or The New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-dale-carnegies-how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people-can-teach-the-modern-worker

"With the book’s success—it has reportedly been purchased more than thirty million times since its initial publication, in 1936"

OK, I updated it.

But the first line under reception says:

How to Win Friends and Influence People became one of the most successful books in American history. It went through 17 print editions in its first year of publishing and sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. The book has sold over 30 million copies worldwide since and annually sells in excess of 100,000 copies. A recent Library of Congress survey ranked Carnegie's volume as the seventh most influential book in American history.[1]

I can't find a source to the 100,000 a year. The original reference was to a financial post article:

The Financial Post Archived 2008-10-09 at the Wayback Machine on Dale Carnegie: "Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, the gold standard of the genre, has sold more than 15 million copies since it was first published in 1937." (5 April 2008)

but I can't find anything that supports this 100,000 / year number. It sounds plausible though.

This seems to suggest that in the early 1980s sales were at 250,000 units a year - it was 1M over 4 years: If these trends are holding, that would make it roughly just over 32M in sales in 2020. That's putting aside audio books, kindle books, and secondhand book sales.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/25/books/reluctant-dale-carnegie-s-50-year-old-classic.html

Lauchlanmack (talk) 01:02, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, that tallies with the maths: If it has sold 30 million copies in 75 years, that suggests an average annual sales of around 400,000 a year. The 1980s figure of 250,000 copies sold a year is less than that and probably on the conservative side.
It's probably actually around 400,000 per year, but I updated the article to say 250,000 a year instead of 100,000 a year.
Total sales is likely actually around 32M to 35M in 2020
Based on those annual sales, and that it had sold 30M in 2011, my personal estimate is that by 2020 the book has sold somewhere between 32M and 35M copies. Lauchlanmack (talk) 07:32, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Steven Watts, Self-Help Messiah (New York: Other, 2013) 2–4

Additional information: Steven Watts' biography of Carnegie says that for the book -

"By November 1939 it reached the one million sales mark. Over the next decade, the book would sell around five million copies"

So we have:

  • one million sales in a decade, or around 200,000 copies sold per year, in its first decade
  • it sold an average 250,000 per year between 1982 and 1986
  • 30 million copies were sold in 75 years by 2011, an average of around 400,000 a year

It feels like the sales volume is increasing over time - it would have had to to reach the 30 million copies sold level.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 07:31, 15 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Conflicting assertions about the relationship of the book to the self-help genre ...

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In the "Origins" section the article says:

"Before How to Win Friends and Influence People was released, the genre of self-help books had an ample heritage. Authors such as Orison Swett Marden, and Samuel Smiles had enormous success with their self-help books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

The Reception section (Critical Assessment) says:

"Despite many of the negative comments from his critics, Carnegie's book established a new genre. Carnegie described his book as an "action-book" but the category he created has since become known as the self-help genre. Almost every self-help book since has borrowed some type of style or form from Carnegie's "path-breaking best seller.""

I don't think both things are true, or if they are they need to be put in balance with each other.

What are your thoughts about how to resolve this?

Lauchlanmack (talk) 03:15, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed the same apparent contradiction. On reading about Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles (but without having read their books), my sense is that they wrote more about working hard and relentlessly, not giving up even under very difficult circumstances, etc. That fits today's "Self Help" book category, but Carnegie was more about how to get people to like you, how to persuade people, etc. That also falls under the "Self Help" book category, but it's a very different kind of book.
Would be be more accurate to say Carnegie created a new subgenre?
--Greg Lovern (talk) 16:45, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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Those 3 references (coming from the French version of this page) seem to be missing in the English version :

Dans le film Le Complexe du Castor, l'acteur principal est au bord du suicide, et il traduit sa conscience par le biais d'un ventriloque qui lui énumère tous les livres qu'il a lus pour avancer dans la vie, dont celui-ci.

Dans le film La neuvième porte, de Roman Polanski, c'est également ce livre que lit l'étrange "fille aux yeux verts" qui protège le héros du film. Celui-ci, qui la croit étudiante, s'en étonne, et demande: "c'est à votre programme?"

Dans le cartoon Une journée au zoo on peut voir une mouffette lire ce livre. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E34:EE98:1830:B48F:F1A9:4E24:CB02 (talk) 23:10, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Languages WFIP book translated into

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What languages has the "Win Friends" book been translated into? ---- MountVic127 (talk) 06:23, 18 May 2022 (UTC) By which it is meant:[reply]

  • the book
  • the Wikipedia article with name of language of article in English

MountVic127 (talk) 06:30, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This sort of information isn't encyclopedic unless it's been mentioned in independent reliable sources like Harry Potter in translation. Graham87 15:35, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What is this book about?

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Amazingly, for "one of the most successful books in American history", this article contains no description of what the book is actually about -- not even a one-sentence description -- and I am left utterly clueless as to what this book is. The closest this article comes to describing the book is a bare list of titles of the parts of the 1981 edition. Talu42 (talk) 19:26, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On the principle that Wikipedia would only accept excerpts from published sources and not original research, I found these. I don't know how best to add them to the article:
I think most readers of the book who liked it would agree with me that it's difficult to summarize without writing a long review, and any short summary like these cannot do it justice.
Although a sentiment like the following has no place in the article, it's my view decades after first reading it that for those of us who are not a born "people person", it is one of the most helpful and valuable books we can read. Imagine a book that can give you much of the advantages that born "people persons" have, without losing anything about who you are. Because that's exactly what this book is.
In fact, come to think of it, I'd say that's a pretty good summary of the book. It shows you much of how to be a people person. You can then start mimicking the suggestions, which with time and practice gradually become naturally integrated into your personality. You literally become more of a "people person" than you would or could likely have ever become otherwise. Though again, without losing anything about who you are.
For those who are natural born "people persons", I dunno. It might be worth a read to see if the toolbox of interpersonal skills life so generously gave you is missing any of the tools described in the book. But in general I'd expect the book might be a rather uninformative read for those folks.
One more point. Some of the book's advice may seem cynical or even crass. I'd argue that for every technique in the book:
  • It can be used honestly.
  • It can be used cynically.
  • It can help you recognize when you are being played by someone using the technique cynically on you.
Greg Lovern (talk) 05:05, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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