Hard as it is to imagine now, most publishing executives initially viewed the For Dummies imprint as a dubious idea at best. How uld insulting potential readers by calling them dummies – right on the book’s ver! — possibly be smart marketing?

But the For Dummies brand became spectacularly suessful.  Faced with learning mputer software from imperable manuals, readers came to view the “for dummies” title as a sign of author empathy, not ridicule.

XBRL certainly mes under the “this stuff is mplicated – help!” category of difficult technical ics that the imprint has traditionally vered (before it took up less challenging subjects, like hamsters and indoor grilling). Many readers will likely be familiar with Hitachi’s XBRL for Dummies book written by Peter Weverka and Wilson So. In October, Wiley will publish an XBRL for Dummies book written by Charlie Hoffman, the father of XBRL, and Liv Watson, one of the pioneers in the field. With two books with the same name, we thought it would be useful to tell you a bit about each.     

Hitachi XBRL for Dummies is a short-and-sweet intro to interactive data in 84 pages. Published last year, it defines XBRL and includes a brief history; it dispels mmon myths and describes the standard’s benefits. Notably, the book explains how XBRL is being used by mpanies for both external and internal reporting, as well as its potential uses in ernment.

At 384 pages, Charlie and Liv’s XBRL for Dummies is a more mprehensive volume. As Charlie states on his blog:

I am doing my best to ndense my 11 years of working on XBRL including hundreds of nference calls, meetings, working with others in creating the specification, working with others creating taxonomies, and generally learning practical approaches to making XBRL work into the book.

The book will tell you what XBRL is, why it is, and how you can get your mpany ready for the new SEC-mandated business reporting standard for publicly traded mpanies. It is targeted at the business reader with no previous experience with XBRL.

Our advice (naturally): get the Hitachi Dummies book now and preorder Charlie’s and Liv’s book from Amazon.