The Dummies also can walk you through dreams, divorce, feng shui and ferrets. Given the explosion of titles in the Dummies and Idiot's series, there is obviously some truth to that. Neither publisher breaks out sales of its series, but their titles together have sold well more than 100 million copies. Yet the drive to keep growing is now pushing both companies into increasingly esoteric areas, raising the possibility that there might, eventually, be too much of a good thing. The same can't be said for The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being Psychic , Aromatherapy for Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Handwriting Analysis .
Many subjects are rejected True, some ideas are too far-out.
The Idiot's guide rejects 70 percent to 75 percent of proposed topics because it deems the market too small or the subject unpalatable. Dummies has tossed aside such subjects as cigars, online sex and horse-track betting. For that, the reader gets tips, lists, charts, cartoons and plenty of white space a format that strikes some people as evidence of the dumbing down of America. In writing the weather book, Cox says, he invented an institution called the Go-Figure Academy of Sciences. Cost was key Even some of those experts on college campuses have turned to the Dummies and Idiot's guides.