The Artha Press Publishes They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion, Federico Malatesta’s Critique of the Advice Industry
The widest-ranging investigation published to date of the self-help industry’s tales, their origin and emptiness, based
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Perrin, TX, Oct. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Artha Press announced today the publication of They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion, a book by Federico Malatesta, founder of FM Transformational Coaching™. The book argues that the self-help industry makes a category error, at scale, and for profit: it pushes protocols, scripts and methods for the one thing it cannot manufacture, the cultivation of a life. Earlier critiques looked at the industry from outside, its sociology, its politics. This book instead looks at it from the inside, following the claims it makes to its sources, one by one.
Cover of They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion by Federico Malatesta (The Artha Press, 2026)
Self-help is a fifty-billion-dollar global industry. Countless books, courses, seminars and podcasts, and what has it produced? Sleep is important. Hard work matters. Having friends is better than not having friends. Exercise is good for you. Who would have ever thought.
“Self-help does not sell knowledge,” Malatesta said. “It sells the experience of acquiring it: the feeling of insight, the high of apparent discovery, the social currency of having read the book.”
Malatesta examines the fabricated statistics, the obsession with winning and sports metaphors, the neuroscience stripped of its empirical constraints, the psychological literature cited against its own conclusions, the quantum physics enlisted for claims it never made, and the borrowed philosophies, Aristotle, Stoicism, Buddhism and Hinduism, hollowed out and sold back as technique. The pattern repeats across best-selling authors who have little else in common, which is what makes the failure structural.
The book refuses to end with yet another protocol. It asks for adulthood. The judgment to tell one situation from another, the grace to value people who can see what you cannot, and fidelity to the desire that makes a life worth living.
“Most of what the self-help industry sells is either a platitude or a lie of some kind: incomplete, overstated, or simply made up,” Malatesta said. “It sells techniques when life calls for wisdom. And when the techniques don’t work, the blame is always on the reader, who is encouraged to come back and buy another product. That’s the business model.”
They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion is published by The Artha Press on October 6, 2026, as an ebook (ISBN 979-8-9957495-0-9) on the major ebook platforms. The paperback (ISBN 979-8-9957495-1-6, 603 pages) follows on October 12, 2026, through online retailers and bookshops.
Book page: federicomalatesta.com/book/they-are-lying-to-you.
Amazon ebook: amazon.com/dp/B0HL4X7HD6.
Press page, images and bio: federicomalatesta.com/media.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is They Are Lying to You about?
The book is the widest-ranging investigation published to date of the self-help industry’s tales, their origin and emptiness. It argues that the industry fails the reader on three counts: it sells techniques when life calls for wisdom; its techniques rest on flawed and misunderstood science, misinterpreted data and philosophies emptied of their meaning; and when the advice fails, the blame falls on the reader, who will return to buy the next product.
Who is Federico Malatesta?
Federico Malatesta is an author and executive coach. He founded FM Transformational Coaching™ and The Artha Ranch™ after a career in global energy, including serving as Chief Investment Officer of a major Oil & Gas company overseeing a forty-billion-dollar capital portfolio.
Is self-help backed by science?
Not in the way it is marketed. The book argues that the industry’s techniques are based on flawed and misunderstood science, from neuroscience to sociology, and on philosophical traditions emptied of their meaning.
Is They Are Lying to You a self-help book?
No. It sells no method: there is no system, protocol or routine revealed in the last chapter and no paid program to enroll in. It offers principles for reading the industry’s claims, and leaves the judgment with the reader and his or her particular case.
About The Artha Press
The Artha Press is an independent publishing imprint based in Texas. They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion is its first title.
About Federico Malatesta
Federico Malatesta is an author and executive coach. He founded FM Transformational Coaching™ and The Artha Ranch™ in Texas after a career in global energy that included serving as Chief Investment Officer of a major Oil & Gas company overseeing a forty-billion-dollar capital portfolio. He writes on leadership, identity, and the second half of life.
Media Availability
Malatesta is available for interviews on why protocols and routines cannot transform a life, why sports are a terrible metaphor for life, and why slogans like “let them” or “find your why” produce fragility rather than purpose or meaning.
Federico Malatesta, author of They Are Lying to You: The Self-Help Delusion and founder of FM Transformational Coaching™
Press Inquiries
Federico Malatesta
Founder, FM Transformational Coaching™
press@federicomalatesta.com
(406) 314-8737
https://federicomalatesta.com
Perrin, TX
