How to Win Friends and Influence People in publication, Carnegie originally began 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. Shimken then hired a stenographer to type up what he heard in one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented the transcript to Carnegie. Dale Carnegie liked the transcript so much he decided to edit and revise it into a final form. He wanted it to be extremely practical and interesting to read. To
How to Win Friends and Influence People sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. The book has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since and annually sells in excess of 100,000 copies. A recent Library of Congress survey ranked Carnegie's volume as the seventh most influential book in American history. The book met widespread popularity, but also stark criticism in many cases. Despite many of the negative comments from his critics, Carnegie's book established a new genre. Carnegie described his book as an "action-book" but the category he created has since become known as the self-help genre. Almost every self-help book since has borrowed some type