the process works on an assembly line model. the author receives a style guide, a kind of “how to write dummies for dummies”, which describes the approach to the audience, the use of humor and how to break down the section titles. the author never writes a complete manuscript before submitting it, but submits it chapter by chapter. Each chapter is edited, peer-reviewed, and verified by what Wiley calls “tech editors.” deadlines are brutal and inflexible.
“It can be a wild ride,” says denise sutherland, a doofus living in canberra. “intense but really rewarding” Sutherland, 55, is the author of four books for dummies, including Word Searches for Dummies (2009), Code Breaking and Cryptograms for Dummies (2009), and Cryptic Crossword Solving for Dummies (2012).
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“I’m a puzzle writer by trade,” she tells me. “wiley first contacted me in 2008 to be a technical editor on a puzzle book, which basically means you’re solving all the puzzles and checking to make sure they’re fair.”
In August 2009, Sutherland received a frantic call from a Wiley acquisitions editor in the US. The company had just learned of the release date for the Lost Symbol, the follow-up book to author Dan Brown’s best-selling Da Vinci Code, much of which involved cracking arcane codes and symbols. Brown’s book was due out on September 15, 2009, and Wiley wanted to follow in his footsteps. “I remember the editor said: how fast can you write a large number of cryptograms?” remember sutherland.
writing cryptograms is not particularly difficult. “Usually it’s just a direct transposition. you put a transposition code into a computer and it spits out cryptograms. but what we decided to do was much more complicated.”
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wiley put sutherland in touch with a new york-based author named mark koltko-rivera. In addition to being a psychologist and academic, Koltko-Rivera was a high-level Freemason. “What we did was we had mark write three conspiracy stories and then I turned them into cryptograms.”
for dummies is what is known as a “category killer”: not many rivals can survive in its shadow. but the internet has presented a serious challenge.
some of the stories used a masonic cipher, and some used codes sutherland generated. she also had to write the chapters on how to solve them, using strategies like frequency analysis, plus an account of the use of ciphers and encryption throughout history.
“I did 250 hours of work in a fortnight,” he says. “I turned in the last chapter with 15 minutes to spare.” eleven years later, the cracking of codes and cryptograms for dummies is still in print.
for fools it is what is known as a “category killer”: not many rivals can survive in its shadow. but the internet has presented a serious challenge. “People now, if you want to learn how to fix your fridge or something, watch a DIY video on YouTube,” Mal Neil says. “Wiley has seen that and they have changed the model of him. they are taking less of a hands-on approach and more of an under-the-hood approach. Instead of giving you a step-by-step guide, they want readers to really understand the topic.”
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Not surprisingly, in the early days, dummies were noted for being proactive with emerging technologies. When Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.20 in 1993, there was a special edition that came with three floppy disks loaded with software. These days, Wiley drives massive traffic to his beginner website and has an extensive ebook offering. And they’re agile: Within days of the sudden work-from-home boom, the publisher commissioned zoom for dummies, which is due in early September.
However, some blind spots remain. Wiley only launched a podcast for suckers last year and hasn’t fully embraced the threat that youtube represents. “We’ve got some ground to make up there,” says Steve Hayes. “In the past, we have worked to support books with digital content, but have not yet pushed video mannequins independently. however, once we get started on that,” he says, only half-jokingly, “we can end that category as well.”
rob o’hearn of booktopia says that the for dummies mark has entered the vernacular and “crossed generations”. In an interview in 2013, Dan Gookin discussed the impact mannequins had on the entire DIY and how-to genre. “if you look at the technical books these days, even the propeller books that are really nerdy, there’s still that personality in there. It’s not the old way where everything was dry and boring and just the facts.”
so when it comes to learning, it seems we’re all dumb now.
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