Especially when you add in the fact that most distributions add in their own flair to configuration (like the location of config files). Unfortunately this is beginning to happen to Nginx as well, but for the most part the guides out there are agnostic and offer help for anyone looking to config nginx.

A lot of that is the fault of the distributors and/or the default "put everything in and comment it out" style that apache ships it in. If you actually sit down and figure out what options are required to serve content, it's not so bad at all.

It's really only more difficult because people are not used to it. I find nginx's documentation to be great and easy to understand.