It's a
grassroots effort to bring attention to those
'for DUMMIES' books whose titles convey a sense of negativity, implying that the readers are dummies or unintelligent people in need of help. Surely this controversial title has attracted readers and buyers -- perhaps that was the intention of the publisher and franchise holder of these books. The
'for DUMMIES' books are popular enough in that they have earned their Wikipedia entry.
This grassroots effort began
August 8, 2008 initially on Squidoo with a lens entitled Rename 'for DUMMIES' Books. Before being ranked, this lens was at >640,000 and debuted the next day at #602 in News, #44610 overall. To get the word out and raise some support and interest in the grassroots effort, this lens was added to Twitter, Digg, Mixx, and Facebook before the writing of this blog post.
It is back to school and that time of year that more of these books will be sold to students and teachers alike. Don't you think it's time to get involved to take a stand about the negativity of this title? I propose a possible solution with renaming those books to '
for NEWBIES.'
I had avoided buying any of those books until only recently; working in Microsoft Access I wanted to find the answer to how to inter-relate subreports into a report layout. I didn't exactly buy the 'Microsoft Access for DUMMIES' book, but opted for 'the Bible' edition.
Does this title bother you? Do you feel it is acceptable -- that the controversial 'for DUMMIES' helps the sale of these instructional books? Want to express your opinions for or against?
Express your opinions:
Should those books carry a different title / cover? Do you agree or not?
