How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a 1936 self-help book written by Dale Carnegie. Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.

Carnegie had been conducting business education courses in New York since 1912. In 1934, Leon Shimkin, of the publishing firm Simon & Schuster, took one of Carnegie's 14-week courses on human relations and public speaking, and later persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes from the course to be revised for publication. The initial five thousand copies of the book sold exceptionally well, going through 17 editions in its first year alone.

In 1981, a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released. The revised edition reduced the number of sections from six to four, eliminating sections on effective business letters and improving marital satisfaction. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time's list of the 100 most influential Nonfiction books.

Before How to Win Friends and Influence People was released, the genre of self-help books had an ample heritage.^{[citation needed]} Authors such as Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles had enormous success with their self-help books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.^{[citation needed]}

Dale Carnegie began his career teaching night classes at a YMCA in New York,^{[clarification needed]} later expanding to YMCAs in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He then taught independently at hotels in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore,^{[citation needed]} writing small booklets to go along with his courses. After one of his 14-week courses, he was approached by publisher Leon Shimkin of the publishing house Simon & Schuster. Shimkin urged Carnegie to write a book, but he was not initially persuaded. Shimkin then hired a stenographer to type up what he heard in one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented the transcript to Carnegie, who edited and revised it into a final form.

To market the book, Shimkin sent 500 copies of the book to former graduates of the Dale Carnegie Course, with a note that pointed out the utility of the book for refreshing students with the advice they had learned. The 500 mailed copies brought orders for over 5,000 more copies of the book and Simon & Schuster had to increase the original print order of 1,200 quickly. Shimkin also ran a full-page ad in the New York Times complete with quotes by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller on the importance of human relations.

Originally published in November 1936, the book reached the New York Times best-seller list by the end of the year, and did not fall off for the next two years. Simon & Schuster continued to advertise the book relying heavily on testimonials as well as the testable approach the book offered.

The 1981 edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People is broken into the following parts: "Twelve Things This Book Will Do For You", "Fundamental Techniques in Handling People", "Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking", and "Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment". The 1936 edition also contained "Letters That Produced Miraculous Results" and "Seven Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier".^{[citation needed]}