On Jan. 16, 2006, the day after the Indianapolis Colts lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in a playoff game, Cathy Day, who grew up in Peru, Ind., began to draw parallels between being a woman and being a football player.

"NFL quarterbacks and American women have a lot in common," Day says.

"Call it unfair if you like, but until they get that ring on their finger, they're considered failures."

Day, who considered herself unlucky in love -- nine of her ex-boyfriends married the next woman they met after her -- decided to mold herself after her beloved Colts.

She would fight back after losing the marriage playoffs just as the Colts did, ending up the Super Bowl champs the following year. Unlike the Colts, Day hasn't gotten her ring yet, but the novelist of the award-nominated "The Circus in Winter" and teacher in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, did end up with a winning book just in time for Valentine's Day titled "Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love" (Free Press, 2008).

"This is the book I was looking for when I found myself age 37 and not knowing where to meet people," Day says.

It's a funny and insightful book, delving into such modern romantic issues as online dating (Day exposes the ones that take advantage of people), the weird world of what she calls "postmodern dating" and what it means to be attractive, accomplished, successful, smart -- and still single.

"I just wanted a book about normal people doing normal things," says Day who has a Web site, www.cathyday.com.

According to Day, her book isn't a dating primer, except for readers who want to know what she did so they won't do the same. But it has many aspects of a smart and sassy self-help book.

"I had set out on a very narrow goal -- I will try to find a good partner," she says.

"When you focus on a narrow goal, you're not seeing some of the blessings along the way, which is one thing I learned. Along the way, I met wonderful people."

But if Day's book isn't exactly self-help, it certainly addresses one of the main themes of many books of that genre -- how to navigate the sometimes-rocky shoals of relationships. And that is a big market.

According to Psychology Today, there are more self-help books in print in the United States than cookbooks.

And while they can cover a range of areas such as finances and staying healthy, many of them -- most aimed at women -- are about finding, fixing and maintaining relationships.

So who reads self-help books?

Probably more of us then we'll admit.

Relationship tomes aren't just for those who don't have friends or family to talk to, they're also for people who need to gain insight, often by turning to someone who, unlike their friends, they don't have see day to day.

"I suggest books all the time in therapy," says Christine Priesol, licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in Munster.

"It's a nice adjunct to coming once a week or twice a month."

Priesol says two of her favorite books about relationships are "Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples" by Harville Hendrix, which was recently released in a 20th-anniversary edition by Holt, and "The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Act of Courageous Change in Key Relationships" by Harriet Lerner (HarperCollins).

"People often buy self-help books before they're ready to go into therapy," Priesol says.

"Sometimes they help, and sometimes people end up in therapy."

In the book "What Happy Couples Do: The Loving Little Rituals of Romance" (Fairview Press, 2008), authors Carol Bruess, PhD, and Anna Kudak, MA, talked to couples around the world, getting them to share their loving gestures, private nicknames and other forms of endearment that help them sustain and nurture long-term relationships.

"It was so much fun," says Bruess, an associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

"I have been studying family and interpersonal communication for 17 years, and interviewing couples about how they create a universe of two stunned me by the type of enrichment these couples create."

Told in one-page anecdotal form with comments by the authors, there are 57 vignettes including one of Bruess' favorites, "Priceless Valentine," about an elderly couple who went to the card shop each Valentine's Day and picked out the card they both liked best. Then, instead of buying it, they read it aloud to each other.

"This elderly couple would go to the store together and say their love out loud," Bruess says.

"Things like that nurture the invisible bond we have. The simplest gestures are often the most magical."