Re: Lowest Common Denominator/Reading to Learn

[Herman Holtz <holtz -at- PALTECH -dot- COM>]

        From my own admittedly limited experience with IDG and their Dummies
books, plus monitoring many discussions of the Dummies books, It has come
across to me that the editors of the books assign a great importance to the
use of humor in the books, even more than to the authors' technical
expertise. The editorial position at the Dummies books headquarters is
apparently that it is quite difficult to write in the style they have
adopted and that not every writer is able to write in that style, regardless
of the writer's abilities in general. - Herm

>I think the success of the "Dummies" etc. books is, apart from being
>generally well written and readable, is a perception that by the reader
>that they won't understand the "technical" book.  For example, your home PC
>user who buys a book on Excel, HTML or whatever, may be put off by the
>(seemingly) more technical offering around.  But a book aimed at "dummies"
>- well we all know we're not THAT stupid so feel we can probably plough our
>way through it to learn/find what we want.


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