SOMETHING strange is happening in the world of publishing. A computer manual with a waspish yellow and black cover is outselling the hot new fiction, romances and thrillers that normally dominate the book charts. The fat paperback has been in the top 10 best selling books in Britain for the past four months. Its title? Windows 95 for Dummies.
Bookstores are currently awash with computer titles aimed at beginners who are confused and intimidated by technical jargon. Scan the shelves and you'll see such heady volumes as the Macintosh Bible "What do I do now?" Book from Charles Rub in, now in its third print run (143,000 copies have been printed to date). As the cover says, it handles "hundreds of potential panic situations and tells you exactly what to do in them". The Complete Idiot's Guide to Excel for Windows 95 has just sold and sold; then there's the Excel Windows 95 for Busy People; the "I Hate series is another one which booksellers seem to remember fondly. And so on ...
But it's the Dummy series that has rung a bell with the punters. As the woman in charge of Eason's computer section in its O'Connell Street branch in Dublin, Gobnait Loughman, says, this is the biggest seller in their whole section. The series, she says, "seems to have hit the right mark".
She also points to all the other publications now using IDGsF characteristic day glo yellow and black colours on their covers, and maintains that they are trying to cash in on the Dummy books popularity.
"They are all really fighting for visibility. There are so many that the different departments are spining their books (as opposed to being face out on the shelf)."
Windows 95 for Dummies is big - a tome of almost 400 pages. Inside there are plenty of funny tips, joky bits, helpful hints, cartoons (such as the one on this page) and lists with bullet points. There are references to "nerdy technical drivel" (which this book avoids), and descriptions such as calling a mouse "a smooth little plastic thing that looks like Soap on a Rope. It rests on a little roller, or ball, and its tail plugs into the back of the PC."
The introduction advises the reader not to bother trying to remember all the Windows 95 buzzwords, such as "Select the menu item from the drop down list". Leave that stuff for the computer geeks, it says.
IDG's Dummies range is one of the best selling computer series in the world, having sold over 25 million copies worldwide since it was launched in 1993. It currently has over 150 titles in print, covering almost every computer package available, plus guides to multimedia and Internet related topics.
And such is the popularity of the Dummies series that we are about to witness the rise and spread of Dummyhood into other "lifestyle" areas. There is now the Parenting for Dummies guide, the Wine for Dummies book, and even TV sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer's Sex for Dummies guide. Other new titles include Marketing for Dummies. Negotiating for Dummies and Management for Dummies.
"I don't mind being called a dummy," laughs David Gooding, sales and marketing manager at IDG. "It's almost like a term of endearment," he says with a chuckle, getting Just a little bit carried away perhaps with his own marketing campaign. "Sales are wonderful."
All the same, Lyndia Meredith of Waterstones in Dublin has found that "people just aren't happy" with the title "idiot" or "dummy". She says that although there has never been a complaint, not everyone is happy about leaving a book lying around with the word "dummy" on its cover.
She also believes people would need a basic training to understand the Dummy books. "They are coming from the States, they are American, maybe the Americans have a different sense of humour . . ."
And while she reckons the Dummies and Idiots ranges account for about a third of the total computer book market, "these books wouldn't be the top sellers. We get a lot of professional people in here who spend money on the technical manuals."
In her experience, people who buy one of the books from the Idiot/Dummy/I-Hate ranges often end up coming back and having to spend more money on further books in the same category - and often regretting that they didn't buy the technical manual at the start.
"I don't think this end of the market is growing, I think it's stable," she says. "The professional (computer) user is the growing section. They can spend £80 to £100 on a technical manual because they're upgrading all the time."
She believes Osborne's new series called For Busy People has a much better title. Another new run, called Dummies 101, which she believes is set to pass the current Idiot and Dummy ranges out, "looks fabulous".
"They are tutorial guides. They set a task at the end of each chapter. It's almost interactive - they'll be huge," Meredith says. "They'll be filtering into the market in the next four to eight weeks."
David Gooding happily recounts the company's recent promotion date, which was titled "Reservoir Dummies" and held on April 1st. Yes, he reckons, people do seem to be comfortable with the word "dummy". Yes, he says, it is as if they had come through some kind of psychological barrier, and through acceptance of their "dummyhood" they can now stand proud and be counted. And, fortunately for the publishers, this happy, cathartic conversion is translating itself into sales. It's one big love in. So far, one million Dummy books have been sold in Britain and Ireland. The people at IDG Books interpret this as being "one million who are smart enough to admit they're Dummies!"