Preloading

The Mega-Popular Book Series That Was Turned Down 144 Times

Season 6 Episode 615
Aired on 12/13/2015 | CC tv-14
Before he wrote The Success Principles and started helping people across the world pave their own paths to success, Jack Canfield co-founded the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. Selling more than 500 million copies worldwide, the series was so massively popular it's difficult to believe that, as Jack says, publishers initially thought the book would be a bomb.

"We all got goosebumps when we had the idea. We said, 'This is amazing.' We went to New York and nobody got goosebumps," Jack says. "Twenty-two publishers over about three or four days, everyone said, "Stupid title, people don't read short stories anthologies don't sell.'"

That wasn't the end of the story. Find out how the book ended up finding a publisher and far surpassing the their modest expectations for sales. Plus, learn how Jack decided to let go of the series and move on to different things.