Don’t bother looking for it; you won’t find any hardcover editions for any For Dummies title. No, they’re all considered “trade paperback,” which is the publishing industry’s term. Yet I do have one hardbound For Dummies title. One of only ten printed.

Back in the early days for the For Dummies brand, things were nuts. The books flew off the shelves. People couldn’t’ get enough of them.

After just a few years, the number of For Dummies books in print approached 10,000,000 units. That’s not ten million copies of DOS For Dummies, of course, but rather ten million For Dummies titles of all varieties that had been printed.

That’s a lot.

In fact, it’s quite a huge number when you consider that the publisher was such a nervous Nellie about the original book, DOS For Dummies, that he canceled the initial print run after just 5,000 copies. Moving forward, that same publisher decided that they’d make that 10,000,000th book special.

They determined which specific title would be rolling off the press when the number 10,000,000 rolled over. That’s kind of like watching your car’s odometer hit 100,000 or some other unique number and then saying, “Hey! We were driving through Wichita when the car’s odometer hit 100,000!” It’s the same fascination.

To mark the event, the publisher ordered that the specific 10,000,000 title that rolled off the press would be hardbound. A special, limited edition of 10 books were printed — probably at great expense, too. A hardbound For Dummies title would probably retail between $40 or $50 just to recover printing costs. Printing only 10 of the books would greatly increase the per book cost.

Yet cost wasn’t an issue because the hardbound copies would be a celebration marking an event.

The publisher had the hardbound copies made and they kept nine, sending them off to various luminaries in the company. But the 10th copy they sent to the author. That was me.

It was one of my books that was the 10,000,000th For Dummies title printed. It’s the first volume of C For Dummies. The publisher considered it a marvelous coincidence that the 10,000,000th For Dummies title was written by the original For Dummies author. I also thought it was cool, and I treasure that title, today. It sits on a shelf in my home, along with the first edition, first printing of DOS For Dummies.

The hardbound copy of the 10,000,000th For Dummies book that ran off the press.