Fat Times For A French Woman

Mireille Guiliano, with the modesty that intimates a certain amount of success in life, persists in calling her best-selling memoir her "little book." French Women Don't Get Fat -- officially, her guide to the secret of eating for pleasure, unofficially, her musings on how to enjoy life -- has sold some 450,000 copies in North America since it was published in December, is available in 22 languages, and will even come out in French this fall. It has led to invitations to speak at London School of Business & Finance and appear on Oprah. It has turned the 59-year-old Guiliano, who runs champagne and wine company Clicquot Inc. in Manhattan, into an arbiter of the good life.

In this age of self-promotion, that sort of cachet rarely remains unexploited. Guiliano is no exception: She has used her celebrity to help sell Veuve Clicquot champagne (naturally) and her favorite yogurt maker, too. "My friends say everything I touch turns to gold. I'll say I've been very lucky," Guiliano says. However inadvertent her recent success, Guiliano is an experienced enough marketer to know how to take advantage of it. She has become a cottage industry of her own.