Posted on: Sunday, October 31, 2004

Publishing firm grows fat on success of diet books

By Wendy Tanaka
Philadelphia Inquirer

As Americans strive to get thinner, Rodale Inc. has grown fatter — and it plans on gaining even more.

The privately held Emmaus, Pa., publishing company has already beefed up on its blockbuster "The South Beach Diet Book," which sold more than four million copies last year by promoting a low-carbohydrate diet. The book's cultlike devotees include Bill Clinton. A South Beach cookbook and a nutrition guide are also selling briskly.

Now, Rodale wants more. It is back with "The Abs Diet," a book that outlines an eating and exercise plan aimed at reducing stomach fat.

The company, which employs 900 people and had revenue of $500 million last year, said it will spend millions on the same sort of marketing campaign for "The Abs Diet" that helped make "South Beach" a hot seller: print ads, bookstore displays, author appearances on TV shows and its own Web site, www.absdiet.com.

In addition, Men's Health magazine, one of Rodale's many fitness magazines, is sponsoring a weight-loss competition tied to the book. The winner gets a Chrysler Crossfire sports car.

Can that kind of aggressive marketing create a best seller?

"Absolutely!" said Steve Murphy, president and chief executive officer of Rodale — adding, however, that even the biggest effort can help only so much.

"No book — no matter what the marketing — will get big and hit a lot of people unless it's got its own editorial integrity," he said.

"South Beach," it seems, was a matter of a book's being in the right place at the right time. Written by a cardiologist, it capitalized on the low-carb-diet craze that had been established by the Atkins diet.

"South Beach" came on the heels of Atkins, which many people found restrictive," said Mike Lafavore, former Men's Health editor.

As for "The Abs Diet," he said: "It's hard to catch the same lightning in a bottle."

Rodale's spending in support of its diet books has been remarkable, even in an industry that has come to demand heavy up-front marketing, insiders say.

"It takes more and more publicity to get people to buy books," said Charlotte Abbott, book news editor of Publishers Weekly.

"It used to be that prominent coverage in a national magazine or on a morning show was enough to jump-start sales of a book, but now you need many more hits in many more media venues to break through the clutter and get people to pay attention," she said.

Even so, spending millions to market a book is rare in publishing — $100,000 is considered "a lot of marketing for a book," Abbott said.

Now, Rodale is pushing "The Abs Diet," written by current Men's Health editor in chief David Zinczenko.

Though he is not a nutritionist, Zinczenko said the high-fiber, "good" fats and carbs eating program and exercise plan explained in his book was vetted by medical professionals.

"I want to put a small dent in the obesity epidemic," Zinczenko said. "I wanted to come up with a simple, no-nonsense plan for an overall healthy lifestyle."

The proliferation of diet books is not necessarily a good thing for those who read them, according to some critics. Gail Frank, an epidemiologist, nutritionist and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said the marketing of such books might be "helping the bottom line for book publishers and authors, but is it helping the waistline of the American public?"

Despite the success of books such as "South Beach," Americans are now heavier than ever, Frank said.