Literature

I've seen several third party ones over the years, but typically from large companies that do them promotionally - they may well have licensed the format.

Anyone can write anything if they can get it published. It’s up to the reader to determine how expert the writer is in their field. A lot of quacks writing “expert advice.” I can show you a lot of chiropractic books with experts and knowledge easily disproved.

There’s a lot of books with plenty of misspellings. Truly feels like publishers are either overworking editors or canning so many that many books aren’t getting thorough read throughs.

Yes. The "For Dummies" books are on occasion prepared and written by people who had no knowledge of the subject and we're self-taught. They chart their learning, do some research, and prepare a guide that is then edited.

Some of the authors are better than others and they become professional learners. Kelly Ewing seems to write about...many topics^ke.

The large majority are written by professionals, like Dan Gookin^dg. Nobody would read a psychology book by someone who isn't a doctor, would they?

If you were to read Tim Ferriss's "4 Hour Workweek", you'll note that he is proposing just this, an "information product". Anyone can be an expert. And, in a way, that book is an example. It is a list of anecdotes and some references. That isn't a recommendation, but if you ever see a used copy or can check it out from a library, the gist can be groked with little effort.

Do you have particular knowledge of a subject? Do you remember how you gained that knowledge? Could you break it down into parts, by imagining you had to teach, for example, a 10-lesson course on the topic? Begin with blogging, build up a following, move on to paid subscriptions, contact an editor and tell them you want to write a book.

"Guide to creating a for dummies book for dummies!"

But yeah to answer your question anyone can write any kind of book, so yeah you could make one if you wanted. And share it online or self-pub or whatever

I have used a couple of Dummies books and I think they tend to be pretty good at going over the basics of a topic, although some are probably better than others. They really are just books that assume the reader is coming in with very little knowledge of the subject. For example, if you get something like “Cooking for Dummies” it might spend time explaining things that a normal cookbook would not, like what a spatula is used for.

People are constantly writing things in the style of the Dummies books. The entire r/explainlikeimfive subreddit is a good example. I don’t know if lemmy has a similar community yet, but it probably will at some point. You’ve probably also seen that some people have been writing up how-to guides for people new to Lemmy that go into the basics and explain things step-by-step. Starting with something small like that on a topic you are interested in would be a good place to start. Spelling and grammar can be fixed, so I wouldn’t let that hold you back.

Even if you don’t end up publishing a book under the “Dummies” name, developing the skill of taking a subject and breaking it down into a format that can be easily understood by others is an incredibly valuable skill. Many times in my career I’ve been handed a task to do something I barely know anything about and then I also end up having to train other people how to do it. It does really take a lot of practice, and I still constantly have to edit when I realize that people are misunderstanding my writing because I wasn’t clear enough. You have to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone reading your writing and think about what questions they might ask, or if they could interpret something you wrote in way you didn’t intend.