The latest Lotus Notes for Dummies book was published in 2003 for Notes 6. There were Lotus Notes for Dummies books for R3, R4, R4.5 and R5 before that, as well as one for LotusScript in 1997 and some others.
There are usually three possible reasons for the absence of books:
1) No writers can or want to write them.
2) No publishers want to publish them.
3) No readers want to buy them.
Which of the three is it for Lotus Notes, or is it a combination? The latest Lotus anything for Dummies book (2003):
What about the competitors? On the Google end, there are several, but the relatively relevant and recent (2008 & 2009) are:
Microsoft Sharepoint seems to be getting more robust, and it has lots of "... for Dummies" books. Here are three published in 2009-2010:
So back to my question. Which of the three issues holds us back, lack of writers, lack of publishers or lack of readers.
It hardly seems like there is a shortage of writers, although perhaps Microsoft and Google subsidize the books and IBM doesn't. Take a look at the presenters at Lotusphere, and you will see lots and lots of potential authors. It is possible that the "... for Dummies" people won't publish any Lotus Notes books, but they seem pretty agnostic.
That leaves you. Have you or your company bought any books for Lotus Notes/Domino, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, Lotus Websphere? There aren't as many as there are for some competitors, but they exist, and the single best way to make sure there are more is to buy the ones that are out already. Here are a few you should consider right now. These are recent or upcoming books, and these authors have staked a lot on their success. Those authors won't take that gamble again if you don't support them. If you don't, please don't bother bemoaning the lack of professional documentation, as you have nobody to blame but yourselves.
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Tags: Lotus Notes