Self Help : Success Coaches

Since Colonial times, Americans have devoured "success literature," those pragmatic guides to a better life from authors including Ben Franklin, Dale Carnegie and Covey. Today they're called self-help books, and they constitute a $563 million-a-year publishing juggernaut. Books are just one avenue to a brand-new you. From seminars to CDs to "personal coaching," the self-improvement industry rakes in $2.48 billion a year, according to the research firm Marketdata Enterprises, which predicts double-digit annual growth through 2003.