This Tuesday, I’m going to be on a radio show with Dr. Ruth. It’s not her radio show. No, the show is to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the For Dummies series. So the question is, what do I have in common with Dr. Ruth?

Twenty years ago DOS For Dummies was published. It become a publishing phenomena. So more books were planned. First they were computer books, but then they started doing trade books, which are your general non-fiction type of book. I believe the first trade book was Personal Finance For Dummies.

Eventually the success of the For Dummies series went to the publisher’s head. So just about any possible title was considered as a For Dummies book. That included Sex For Dummies, which I personally thought was ridiculous. I mean, Sex For Dummies is a punchline, not a book. Wasn’t the For Dummies series about making the complex understandable? Cats can have sex without reading a book, so is there really a need for Sex For Dummies?

My argument was actually quoted in USA Today. The publisher was making hay because they landed Dr. Ruth to write the book. Oh boy!

Back in the mid-1990s, Dr. Ruth was extremely popular. She had her own TV show, radio show, she was often a guest of other shows, and she was a cultural icon. She also had quite a few books under her belt already.

From what I heard, she didn’t want to write a For Dummies book, though I never was told why. Apparently the publisher approached her several times to write the book and she kept turning him down. Finally, she relented.

They told me that they paid her the largest advance of any For Dummies author ever: $250,000 to write Sex For Dummies.

That advance amount specifically bothered me. The publisher responded that if Sex For Dummies would help prevent just one unwanted teen pregnancy, then the expense was worth it. I countered by saying that the publisher should just find some teenage slut and pay her the quarter million dollars to keep her legs closed.

My disdain for Sex For Dummies was widely known among the editors. The editor assigned to the project emailed me often. He explained that Dr. Ruth didn’t actually write the book. No, someone named Pierre wrote it. Dr. Ruth just put her name on the cover.

The editor had a great sense of humor, and he appreciated the value that humor added to the For Dummies titles. His main complaint about the material was that it wasn’t funny. He emailed me, that he could turn the material into a great For Dummies title with lots of humor, but he wasn’t being paid to do so. He pointed out the flaws to his superiors, but they didn’t seem to care. After all, they landed Dr. Ruth!

He said, “Where is the chapter titled, ‘Masturbation: A hands-on guide’?” He remarked that the book could write itself. But, as he explained in another email, “Dr. Ruth and Pierre. One of them doesn’t know how to write and the other one doesn’t know anything about sex.”

I got lots of emails from him complaining about the book. They were hysterical! Eventually the editor quit because he was so frustrated with what was happening to the For Dummies titles in general and with Sex For Dummies specifically.

Finally, when Sex For Dummies was released, I read a copy. (I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.) It was horrid. The book was dry, just like the editor told me. No humor. In fact, the book was mostly about sexually transmitted diseases. It was gross. The illustrations were sterile and boring. In my opinion, the only thing that made Sex For Dummies a For Dummies book was the yellow cover the publisher slapped on the thing.

So tomorrow I’m on Internet radio at Blog Talk Radio at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (1:00 PM Eastern) with Dr. Ruth. I’ll be nice. I’ll be polite. That’s because I’ve just vented all I believe about one of the worst For Dummies books ever, the one she didn’t even write, Sex For Dummies.