As well as making sure to “Be Proactive” and “Begin with the End in Mind”, Highly Effective People may also have something of an eye for a bargain, it seems, after it emerged that the bestselling used book of the last 15 years was Stephen R Covey’s smash-hit 1989 self-help title The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Covey’s title, which “presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centred approach for solving personal and professional problems”, topped a list compiled by used books marketplace AbeBooks of its top 100 bestsellers around the world since 2000. It came in ahead of a host of classic titles, with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in second place, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in third, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God in fourth and JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye in fifth.
“Millions of ‘new’ copies of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People have been sold but clearly many are not retained by the original owners and find their way onto the secondhand book market where they receive a second life, and sell again,” said Richard Davies from AbeBooks. “This is a book that many people want to read, but no one wants to keep.”
In total, 12 self-help titles appear on the list, with sixth place taken by The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, in which the author “guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse’s primary love language –quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch”.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is in 27th place, and Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson is in 29th.
“It’s very easy to find copies of Covey’s book on the secondhand book market, both in general used bookshops and through online sellers who offer copies at very cheap prices. Its content has not dated even though social and business life has changed considerably since 1989, so, potentially, it could sell well for many years to come,” said Davies.
Covey died in 2012 but, AbeBooks added, his “influence has spread far and wide – Bill Clinton met with him in 1994 in order to incorporate the habits into this presidency, and, in 1996, Time magazine named him one of the top 25 most influential Americans”.
