[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.

[6] 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.

[11]: 142  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.

[15] How to Win Friends and Influence People was number eight on the list of "Top Check Outs Of All Time" by the New York Public Library.

[16] After How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in November 1936 and ascended rapidly on best-seller lists, the New York Times reviewed it in February 1937.

How to Win Friends and Influence People was written for a popular audience and Carnegie successfully captured the attention of his target.

The book experienced mass consumption and appeared in many popular periodicals, including garnering 10 pages in the January 1937 edition of Reader's Digest.

[22] The book continued to remain at the top of best-seller lists and was even noted in the New York Times to have been extremely successful in Nazi Germany, much to the writer's bewilderment.

It was written that Carnegie would rate "butter higher than guns as a means of winning friends" something "diametrically opposite to the official German view.