Xand van Tulleken's investigation into wellness goes to Cornerstone Press
Cornerstone Press has acquired Xand van Tulleken’s investigation into subscription-based wellness products.
Helen Conford, publisher, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The New Snake Oil: Health and Wellness in the Age of Confusion in an exclusive submission from Zoë Waldie at RCW. The book will be published in 2026. Rights have been sold to Crown in the US, Knopf in Canada, and are under offer in Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal.
Cornerstone Press said: “In the past decade, the healthcare sector has witnessed a remarkable surge in innovation: drug design, genomics and diagnostic technology have all changed almost beyond recognition. Simultaneously, there has been a significant expansion in consumer health services, including the supplement industry, blood testing, consumer genomics and wearable technology, which claim to improve ‘wellness’… rather than curing or preventing specific disease states.
“What does this shift in emphasis from health to wellness mean for the way that health policy is made, and the way we understand our bodies? And are the claims of these wellness services – that they can extend our life, improve our bodies or increase our mental performance, really justified?”
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Van Tulleken, an award-winning broadcaster and honorary associate professor at UCL’s Health of the Public Institute, explores "whether wellness is really making us well".
He said: “I am so thrilled to be working with Helen and the extraordinary team at Cornerstone. Vast numbers of contradictory health and wellness claims increasingly dominate our lives and I’m excited to help readers – and myself – find our way through the confusion.”
Conford said: “The New Snake Oil promises to be rigorous and humorous, full of original reporting. Xand’s expertise, his friendly approach and his eye for an unusually telling detail bring us an urgent tonic of a book that so many of us need as the possibilities and supposed promises of wellness begin to overwhelm us. I’m delighted and rather humbled to be his publisher.”
