Terms for manuals, self-help books, etc

[skdadl]

This is a sort of thesaurus question, I guess.

I'm thinking about the various kinds of books that have to do with illness/es or therapy. For some of them we have clear labels: to me, a "self-help" book, eg, would be something like "The Habits of Successful People" -- ie, there would be an element of the inspirational or exhortatory to a self-help book: this is how you pull your socks up.

But what do we call books that are somewhat more neutral than that? Say someone has developed an effective method of delivering a particular kind of therapy and simply wants to teach that method, straight up. Such a manual would not quite be a self-help book, yes/no?

And what about memoirs that are meant to be inspirational? Those can run the gamut from ultra-sentimental to very literary -- any terms that anyone associates with those, of any level?

This is really a more banal question than I've made it sound. My mind is just not producing many synonyms on this turf.

[lagatta]

The self-help books can also include the "12-step" category, as based on AA, NA, CA, OA and all the other As... Even the ones not so closely based on that outlook often list things like "Ten habits of successful cat-trainers".

Manuals can go by the name "How to" books, and of course the recent ... "for idiots" (Editing for idiots, cat care for idiots...).

Schlocky examples of the inspirational books include the "Chicken soup for the ... soul" series (Chicken soup for the cat-owned editor's soul)... and then there is all the stuff about simplicity.