How many for dummies books are there?
ChatGPT said:
There’s no single, official “current count” out there, but here’s the best picture based on the latest sources:
As of a recent bookstore insider estimate, the For Dummies franchise includes around 2,600 individual titles
Similar estimates—such as a Reddit discussion referencing Wikipedia—state approximately 2,500 titles
A Fordham University summary notes that over 2,000 titles had been published by the 30‑year mark after the original 1991 release of DOS for Dummies
So the consensus is that there are now roughly 2,500 to 2,600 For Dummies books.
Today I begin a quest to become at least adequate in most subjects. As one of the least contributing members of our trivia team, and just generally in pursuit of more education (these Michigan alumni am I right?), I decided that I wanted to learn as much about as many topics as I can. Just think of how incredible of a conversationalist I will become after I learn about birdwatching and can tell you about the type of seed that attracts the different types of birds, or get super good at planespotting and will no longer have to defer to discussing current events and politics and celebrity gossip. With that said.. today marks the start of my mission to read the entirety of the For Dummies series.
Because one thing’s for certain: I refuse to be caught being a “dummy” ever again.
Given the sheer volume of information this project entails, I’ve decided to publish it in installments, partly to make it manageable, and partly to hold myself accountable. Throughout this series, I’ll share my thoughts on the process and my overall experience, though not too many of the actual takeaways. After all, if I’m spending a whole year reading the entire For Dummies collection, this is information I will be sure to paywall. According to my rough estimate, not including time spent hunting down the books, this is going to take about 364 days to cover most of the major topics.
When I was talking to my friend Rafi on the topic he made a great point, which was that most people have not read one books worth of content on most subjects, so by doing that you are immediately the one with the most information on that topic and can appear knowledgable.
With that being said, please forgive that this is not a beautifully wrapped here is the challenge and here is my findings article for you, for great things take time. Think of the video game industry; they drop a release trailer years in advance of the final game coming out. Consider this article a teaser, if you will. The Buddhists say you might not get all the answers in a single lifetime. I promise it won’t take that long but subscribe from that mentality. Maybe I should find a more Buddhist readership.
Preliminary Research:
Why the range in number of books in the series?
The franchise releases new editions regularly especially in fast-changing areas like tech so the count evolves over time.
The total includes all formats and variations: original titles, updated editions, Quick Reference guides, different language editions, All‑in‑One Desk References, and specialized series like More... for Dummies.
Since I don’t care about reading every variation, I will be focused on reading the English version for all of the topics that are reasonably worth reading. For example, I probably won’t read multiple editions covering minor updates to an operating system, but I will read the most recent version of that book.
And while I could read each editions in all of their published languages, reading in English, makes the most sense.
This prunes the collection quite significantly, making this project slightly more feasible (from 2600 - ~1000 books).
How long will it take to read all of those?
TOTAL For Dummies Book Count Estimate
As of now, there are:
~2,600 total titles across all subjects and formats
But the “main collection”—meaning standalone, original topic-based books (not workbook editions, not All-in-One bundles, not niche sub-editions)—is closer to 800–1,000 titles
These are things like Accounting for Dummies, French for Dummies, Quantum Physics for Dummies, etc.
Let’s say I want to read the main 1,000 titles.
Assumptions:
Average For Dummies book = 350 pages
Reading speed = 50 pages/hour (moderate pace, skimming examples, focusing on content)
Total time per book ≈ 7 hours
Realistic Considerations
If my goal is to “skim every major topic,” I could:
Hard stops: must read 100-150 essential ones covering tech, science, finance, art, philosophy, cover to cover and skim the remaining 900 topics
This would take ~700–1,000 hours, or just under a year at 3 hours/day
The Plan:
After doing my research about the for dummies collection, I selected a bunch of the books that I was most interested in exploring first as an intro to the project. I asked ChatGPT for a list of the topics I would probably like to learn about, based on what it knows about me and it gave me this list. From which I then slightly adjusted according to my level of interest. From these I plan to branch out into the more general topics for each of the main subject areas they cover to get a pretty good overview of well, hopefully everything. Below is the current working order I have.
Skateboarding for Dummies
Poker for Dummies
Watercolor Painting for Dummies
Acrylic Painting for Dummies
Digital Art for Dummies
Chess for Dummies
Etsy for Dummies
Small Business Marketing for Dummies
Creative Writing for Dummies
Graphic Design for Dummies
Social Media Management for Dummies
And then expand into:
Freelancing For Dummies
Pricing/Negotiation for Dummies
Blogging for Dummies
Hacking for Dummies
Data Science for Dummies
Podcasting for Dummies
Branding For Dummies
Passive Income For Dummies
Philosophy For Dummies
Astronomy For Dummies
Space Exploration For Dummies
Theoretical Physics For Dummies (advanced)
Taxes For Dummies
Meditation For Dummies
World Religions For Dummies
Art History For Dummies
Chess For Dummies
Music Theory For Dummies
Guitar For Dummies
Cryptography For Dummies
Urban Planning For Dummies
Event Planning For Dummies
Piano for Dummies
Birdwatching for Dummies
Hedge Funds For Dummies
Sex For Dummies
Magic Tricks For Dummies
Stock Photography For Dummies
Ice Hockey For Dummies
Vegetable Gardening for Dummies
Wilderness Survival
Camping for Dummies
Survival for Dummies
Decluttering For Dummies
Sewing For Dummies
Rocket Science For Dummies
Time Travel For Dummies (a speculative edition but it does exist)
Astrobiology For Dummies
Weather For Dummies
Climate Change For Dummies
French All-in-One For Dummies
Travel Phrases For Dummies (multiple editions)
World History For Dummies
Mandarin Chinese For Dummies
SAS For Dummies
Blockchain for Dummies
Devops for Dummies '(because what does Regular Alex do all day?)
Photoshop For Dummies
Geography For Dummies
Sleep for Dummies
Trivia For Dummies
Karaoke for Dummies
Sudoku for Dummies
And so on. I also wanted to take suggestions from my readership if there are any topics that we simply cannot miss. Please feel free to send me the titles and I will ensure it is included.
Before I got started there was one other major blocker besides time that could impact this project. And it is cost.
As each for dummies book is generally around 30 dollars a piece, purchasing all of them when trying to complete a task of this scale, becomes immediately unfeasible. As I do not want to torrent them and would like to give some credit to the original authors, my solution to this was to use copies that I could find, borrow from local libraries and purchase second hand. Many second hand shops have many of these if you are looking including general thrift stores like goodwill. From there, I also found used copies on ebay that were about 3-8 dollars per listing before shipping. I may later in the project go into purchasing the kindle versions, which are significantly cheaper if trying to source books is becoming an issue ever.
But I do kind of want an absurdly huge collection of for dummies books somewhere. They are pretty large though, now that I think of it maybe I should do the math on if I would be able to fit all of these in my room even.
Regardless, the first couple books I found pretty cheap on ebay and picked up. Because nothing quite says lifelong pursuit of knowledge like bidding for Excel for Dummies at 3 am on eBay for $3.99.
Execution:
Well, lets get started.
Book one: Skateboarding for dummies.
I know that after all of that for me to go and start not with one of the main topic categories seems redundant, but I had just gotten laid off and wanted to take up surfskating (a type of skateboard that emulates the movements of a surfboard so that you can practice turning and cutting in on a wave on pavement). It is meant to improve your surfing skills while skateboarding. And because instead of just learning surfskate like a normal person, I was like, well I don’t know how to regular skateboard so I should first get that and learn that (similar to a week into learning violin, I decided I did not have the basics of percussion so I got a guitar to simplify and then work my way back to the violin eventually). Which I guess I was also doing a meta level higher with surfing in the first place. Maybe I should just stick to trying the original thing in the first place, but there is no Surfing for Dummies so alas.
My skateboard, the only one Walmart had in stock (one with a pink dinosaur on the undercarriage), a large roll of bubble wrap for safety, and my skateboarding for dummies book had just arrived in the mail. I was ready to begin.
First I decided to read the book, it starts off with a long section about understanding the parts on your board and the terminology you will need like the trucks on the board. This was useful because I had no idea when it came I would have to screw the wheels on and tighten them using my judgement corresponding to my skateboarding skill level. Which was about the same as my skateboard building skill level: a 0. After using the book to help me assemble the board, I took the board out to the Embarcadero with the book and decided I was going to learn to skate.
It turns out that while many of the fundamentals are helpful to have learned from the book, that skateboarding turns out to be one of those things that you have to kind of learn by just doing a bunch of times and is muscle memory more than anything. It also turns out that if you are at the Embarcadero with a pink helmet on, actively reading from a Skateboarding for Dummies book, trying to learn how to propel yourself forward, people will see you and start laughing, or taking pictures which I likely should have expected but god was it an embarrassing oversight.
After this I only read the book while practicing inside my apartment complex, which stunted my progress quite dramatically, at a time I was willing to commit about 2 hours each day to improving given I had been laid off, grinding job applications the other 12 hours of the day.
I ended up getting okay at skateboarding, but still am not able to do all of the tricks from the book. I eventually switched to the surfskate, for which there is no for dummies book to my knowledge yet (maybe I will write one? how do you get qualified enough is there a dummy threshold test that I must surpass to get published for the series, or can anyone write one? maybe there is a writing a for dummies book for dummies, if not, maybe I can write that one too). I did get kinda good at that, but I had also ripstiked back in my youth like it was my day job so it could be from that.
Overall skill progression: from a 2 /10 - 6 / 10.
Amount of that i can contribute to the book: + 2 skill point increase.
Basically the biggest area the book helped me with was, learning what areas there are to learn about skateboarding and giving a comprehensive overview. For example, the terminology, and posture, and tricks. From there I could use YouTube to dive deeper and learn more. I think even just having the index page of this book would have helped me have a path or reference to work through the learn more.
Granted, this is a topic that generally is not learned from the format of a book so I expect this to be less helpful than some of the other for Dummies books in the queue.
Book two: Poker, for dummies.
So my next venture into Poker came inspired by our friend Vincent who is pretty good at it. We generally play Texas Hold’em and I am decent but have never played with any real stakes. I would consider myself alright but definitely not better than average.
The first thing I noticed when I got this book was that it was written by a world series poker competitor and a columnist for card player magazine. It covers how to play and different variations of poker, then goes into advanced strategy, information about different venues like cardrooms, casinos and computer based poker, more poker fun (covering myths, slang, terms), and the best top 10 ways to read your opponent. This book is meant more as a reference guide and less to read cover to cover.
A lot of the things in it were actually super helpful, for example it covered betting terms and how to raise and call, the proper etiquette at a game, how to keep records of the money spent while learning to calculate your win rate, and provided an overall learning plan. Things I found notably insightful to my game were thinking through the benefits of getting caught bluffing sometimes. Although there were some more interesting topics covered in the book as well, like what food it is expected that you provide when hosting a home poker game, and even a section titled: coping when it all goes wrong, which I am wondering how much can skill transfer into ones personal life.
Alongside the book, I downloaded a bunch of Poker apps and because I had a bunch of flights back and forth from Vancouver and Montana that week, I was able to play a lifetimes amount of online poker. I played minigames, poker daily challenges, mini tournament simulators, and eventually a couple real online games. I have not yet ventured to the casino setting but I would say in the couple weeks that I have been reading and practicing that I feel much more confident when I make a move and do much more with intention.
Unless I learned nothing except the art of bluffing from the book, in which case maybe the mental game of poker has already begun. Unfortunately for you, I guess we have no way to know making this a kind of useless review as I am financially incentivized for you to think I am bad at Poker, if I thought I would ever play you. While we are at it, we should also think about if there is an incentive for me, for you to think that I am really good at poker, and overestimate me?
Overall skill progression: Wouldn’t you like to know.
Amount that I can contribute to the book: Probably like 3.5/10 skill points.
And that concludes the books that I have currently read in the series, right now I am working my way through Watercolor Painting for Dummies. Please comment below or reach out to send me any topic you would like to make sure I cover, or great recs. But yes they must be from this collection.
And just like I promised earlier, there will need to an update later. So to be continued…
I think you're missing the point of being blonde
you may just be the most genius dummy i know