About 15 million copies of Johnson’s previous book, “The One Minute Manager” (co-written with Kenneth Blanchard), have been snatched up worldwide and the book remains in print two decades after it was published. Can Johnson top those numbers with “The Present: The Gift that Makes You Happy and Successful at Work and in Life”? Doubleday is betting on it. The publisher shipped a quarter of a million copies before the official Oct. 1 release date, just in time for the holiday season.
The 112-page book, written in simple language and large print, takes only an hour or so to read–about right for a long train ride or commuter flight. Johnson uses the same basic formula as his last multimillion reader hit, but this time he substitutes men for mice and includes real-life situations that many readers can now identify with, including layoffs and company cutbacks. The book’s essential advice: learn from the past, live in the present and plan for the future. It’s a lesson the physician-turned-author says he had to learn himself before he could write about it, which might explain the five-year wait between books. Johnson, in a rare interview, spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett about what made his last books best sellers–and why he thinks this one will be as well.
NEWSWEEK: Your last two books sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. That’s a tough act to follow.
Spencer Johnson: I do a lot of reader reviews, so I never publish a book until it has been read by many people and I have listened to their feedback and continually crafted the book so it becomes a book that many readers find beneficial. Early readers are my editors and I respect any patterns I see in their feedback. If I write the book not so much as I want to write it but based on what readers want to read, then I am really serving readers. And the more I am observant to readers, the better the book does, of course.
Were you surprised by the success of your last books?
The economies of book publishing allow a book publisher to actively market a book for 30 to 90 days, then it depends on word of mouth. It’s not just the agent or the advertising, though those things help. In the end, the book has to resonate with people’s hearts and heads. But I had no idea that those books would do so well worldwide; it was remarkable that people all over the world are dealing with the same things and looking for the same practical answers.
It surprised me that a book called “Who Moved My Cheese?” would even be a best seller in China, where most people don’t even eat cheese.
I had real reservations about whether people would even get that title. But in China, it is really funny. Someone actually sent me a list of 14 different books all written in Chinese that are takeoffs of my book. There is even a successful play in Shanghai based on it. Of course, we don’t get royalties or permission, but that’s fun for an author because it is a real joy to see people take it beyond where you had it envisioned. It has been quite an interesting phenomenon.
When did you come up with the idea for “The Present”?
In my mind I have been writing “The Present” since the early 1980s. “Who Moved My Cheese?” was actually created in 1979, but I didn’t write and publish it until much later.
Why the delays?
I like to live the book for a number of years. How many lecturers have given lectures about things they don’t follow themselves? Readers can sense when something is true and real and powerful and when it is not. It is important to live the truth before you share it yourself. I enjoy savoring the writing process, too, and I enjoy reader reviews. Readers really coedit and cocreate the book. If you park your ego, it turns out to be more fun and more relaxing and far healthier.
I understand that the original publishing date for “The Present” was moved back from this spring. Was that because of readers’ feedback?
It was scheduled as a March release, but the response I was getting from readers was that there was a deep hunger in their comments for connecting the past and future to the present, which I had focused on originally. So I told the publisher we wouldn’t publish for another six months. I had touched on this, but not nearly as much as I do now.
How many test readers do you have–and how do you pick them?
I usually have at least 100 people read it. They have to be people I don’t know. Because my books are positioned initially to be used at work, we will contact a person in a company and someone who has bought one of my books before or one of the training programs based on the books, and we ask them if someone else in the company would like to read the manuscript. I ask people to ask other people in their office so that there is no direct connection and I am not told what they think I want to hear.
Who do you imagine as the audience for your books?
I always see the reader as all of us. I am not conscious of differences and maybe that is why the book enjoys universal appeal. As individuals we have so much in common: we are all striving, we are all afraid, we all want things to work for. That’s who I write for.
“Who Moved my Cheese?”, like “The Present,” seems to be written at a grade-school level and yet it has been widely read and cited by top business executives and professors. Why do you think that is?
You might not have thought it would appeal to intelligent, high-powered sophisticated people. But because they are so overwhelmed with information today and so pressed for time, if you give them something quick and enjoyable to read and let them discover some profound truth–something they define as a profound truth–they’ll respond to it. I think the mistake we make–and I used to make as well–is that we think of anything simple as being at a grade-school level. I was educated as a physician and I was always trained to distrust the simple. My professors always told me nothing is as simple as it may seem. But I have learned there is a difference between simple and simplistic. Simplistic is naive and out of touch. But simple is just enough and nothing more.
Ilene Hochberg, a writer who wrote the parody “Who Stole My Cheese?”, once called your book “the Barney of the publishing industry, a book that people love to hate.” How would you respond to that?
I think there was a small backlash. But news goes to the exception–they don’t say, gee, a lot of people had a good day today. There were a lot of copies sold of this book, but there are a lot of hens in the world and that is what they do best. They are angry with life and certainly annoyed with something positive.
So I guess you haven’t read her book?
No.
Did you get any negative feedback from readers about “Who Moved My Cheese?”?
There was a mistake that some well-meaning bosses made. They would read it and then buy copies for those who reported to them, whether they wanted it or not. I’d say there was far less than 5 percent–more like half a percent–who resented it [the book]. In some ways, they were right. If it were me and I advised them, I would say, “Here is something I found useful. Take a look and see if you find it useful.” Maybe they saw it instead as a message from their boss that they need to change so, of course, their reaction is, of course not.
Do you worry about that happening with “The Present”?
This is a gift and the purpose is to make you happier and more successful. There should be a lot less resentment and more appreciation for people getting this as a gift.
Is that why you write the stories in parable format?
The real powerful fundamental reason is that people don’t like to be told things, but they love discovering things. In a typical nonfiction book, you are telling people what to do, but in a parable or story, you watch the character and then you pick and choose what you like and don’t like and hopefully what you find is practical and you can apply it to your own work and life.
Has your background as a physician influenced your writing?
It has had an enormous influence. As a young physician, I noticed something that made a lasting impression on me: people who were sick were usually not as happy or didn’t have as positive an outlook on life as those who were healthy … I was raised to think simply in terms of drugs and medicine, but I now think we make ourselves sick and we make ourselves healthy and we do it unconsciously.
What is your next project?
It’s a book called “Peaks and Valleys” about the ups and downs of work and life and how there is a secret so that when you are on the peak you will stay there longer and when you are in the valley you can make it a good time. It is something I have been thinking about and living for 20 years.
When will we see it?
It should take me a while.
