I never knew my job existed before I took it. In fact, I’m sure a lot of people who purchased, read, and even enjoyed computer books didn’t consider that an entire computer book publishing industry existed.

A computer book is officially a trade book. It’s nonfiction — unless you’re writing about Microsoft products. A computer book is the only type of book that Goodwill and other thrift shops refuse to accept if it’s over 18 months old.

Yeah, it’s a weird thing, the computer book. It’s sort of the bastard offspring of a textbook and manual.

Computer textbooks have been around since computers found their way into educational institutions. Manuals were more of a traditional, high-tech thing. Any advanced gizmo came with The Manual. It was expected. Of course, today, nothing comes with a manual. You’re fortunate if you find a flimsy leaflet covered in pictures and Chinese text.

Textbooks had the reputation of being dull and boring. Well, except for Fortran For Humans. That was a cool book.

Manuals were worse. Often written as an afterthought, typically by the programmer himself, manuals were dreadful. I’m thankful for that oversight, because dreadful manuals spawned the computer book publishing industry. They were a motivation not only for writers but for readers.

I refer to computer book buyers as readers. I’m unique in that perception. The publishers call them users, which reflects upon their overall attitude of what constitutes a computer book.

When a computer user became frustrated with the manual, they turned to something similar. They wanted another, better manual. They wanted a book. So they went to a bookstore and tried to find a book on the same subject. Often any book would do; even if it were a terrible book, it was often an improvement upon the manual.

The computer book business boomed in the late 1970s. The great publishing houses of New York each had a computer book division. They saw the tremendous appetite, even for the small computer market back then. Thousands of computer books were published. I heard that authors were given outrageous advances, often hundreds of thousands of dollars to write a book. Scant, if any technical checking was done, and the books were just dumped on the market.

Then came 1982.

In 1982, the computer book publishing industry went bust. This was when I bought my first computer, the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III.

I remember walking into a bookstore back then. Where once I saw hundreds of computer books — eight or more racks with five or six shelves each — I suddenly saw only half a rack, maybe 50 or so computer books. The computer book publishing industry went belly up.

A few publishers survived those dark days. I’ll write about what happened afterwards in Friday’s post.