DOS For Dummies changed the computer book publishing industry over 20 years ago. You can read the history on this website here, but what’s not told on that page is how the other computer book publishers reacted at the time. It got ugly.

Initially, DOS For Dummies was considered a novelty book. Plenty of similar titles existed at the time. One that I remember is Stupid DOS Tricks, although I may not remember that title exactly.

Stupid DOS Tricks sold well for about 9 months and then the novelty ran off. That’s because it had merely a clever title, but otherwise was packed with typical DOS info. It was more of a magazine article than a book you’d use as a reference. At least that’s how I remember it.

Oh, and I was very jealous of the title!

Other publishers back in the early 1990s witnessed DOS For Dummies and figured that it would be a fad. They watched closely, of course.

Upon reflection, it’s really quite interesting to me that book publishing was such a major business. Remember, the Internet existed in 1991 but only as text. It’s not the alternative go-to reference that it’s become today. Back in the 1990s, if you had an issue with your computer, you headed to the bookstore. Today, you type a question into Google.

But I digress.

After about a year, it became obvious to every computer book publisher that DOS For Dummies was not going away. In fact, the sales trend kept growing and growing. The other publishers wanted to capitalize on that success, but quite honestly, they just didn’t understand why the book was popular.

DOS For Dummies worked because it was well-written. It connected with the reader. Thanks to my editor, Mac McCarthy, it was inspired! That’s a good formula.

Once the other publishers woke up to my book’s success, they decided they would attempt to dethrone it. They didn’t decide to do so by publishing a book that was well-written and clever. Nope, they just went insane and tried to replicate what they believed made DOS For Dummies successful.

On Wednesday’s blog post, I’ll show you some of the nonsense that they came up with.