Health Communications, Inc. | Other Ventures in the 2000s
Other Ventures in the 2000s
HCI planned to survive beyond Chicken Soup, though by 2000 the series did not seem to be at all lagging. The company varied its offerings, putting out its first work of fiction in 1999. Health Communications also stepped up the number of books it published annually, increasing from 35 in the late 1990s to around 50. The company also worked tirelessly to sell the Chicken Soup books internationally, where the translations were very popular in countries such as Mexico and Japan. It expanded its physical plant and updated its marketing and distribution plans for better use of the Web.
HCI developed a new imprint in 2000, called Simcha Press. This division specialized in books on spiritual growth and personal enrichment geared towards Jewish readers. The company also diversified into an imprint for its teen books, HCI Teens. Its Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul had grown into a series within a series, with editions for the Christian teen, the pre-teen, and several sequels to the original teenage soul book. HCI also issued a similar book series, Taste Berries for Teens, under its HCI Teens imprint. The Taste Berries books were also anthologies of inspirational morsels, authored by Bettie and Jennifer Youngs.
In 2002, Health Communications agreed to take over distribution of trade books produced by the renowned addiction recovery center the Hazelden Foundation. HCI had not distributed other publishers' books before, but the tie with Hazelden was natural, considering HCI's background in materials for rehabilitation professionals. The next year, the company spent a billion dollars on a new binding machine that would for the first time give the publisher the ability to produce its own hardcover books. In 2003, HCI also launched a Spanish-language imprint called HCI Espanol. HCI had put out a Spanish version of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Sopa de Pollo Para el Alma, as early as 1995, and this volume became one of the best-selling Spanish-language books in the United States. HCI saw potential in the Spanish-language market, not only for the Chicken Soup books but for many other self-help titles on its back list and for new books to come.
Ten years after the first Chicken Soup book came off of HCI's press, the series had sold an estimated 80 million copies in English, and an untold number of copies in 35 different languages. Canfield and Hansen and various other collaborators had put out some 70 Chicken Soup titles, extending the brand into books of cartoons and photographs as well as many variations and follow-ups of earlier titles. However, Health Communications was not entirely defined by the popular non-fiction series. By 2005, its back list had grown to more than 500 separate titles, and it worked with some 150 different authors. It began calling itself the "Life Issues Publisher," meaning it put out diet, women's issues, and business books as well as more traditionally defined self-help tomes. The company had come through a boom-and-bust cycle in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when popular titles had quickly boosted sales and then left HCI struggling. The company handled the much bigger boom of the Chicken Soup books with what seemed to be wisdom and foresight gained from experience. The series had brought HCI unexpected revenue, but the company continued to branch out with new and different books, so that it had other authors to rely on in case the Chicken Soup empire should falter.