This is the last in my three part series on bulking up your library. If you haven’t already checked out parts one and two, it might be worth you doing that before taking a look at my last few ideas:
Take the e out of ebooks
If you’re one of those frantic give-me-the-latest-trick-and-give-it-now ebook buyers then hunt through your hard drive and print out your ebooks and bind them at a local stationers. I have a few files of printed ebooks that I would have never looked at again if I didn’t have them printed out. Now I can quickly grab them and read them en-route or en-the toilet.
Lately I’ve been sending those magic magazines on a CD (Pabular, Jinx etc) to printers and having them bound up professionally. They look great and while most of them take up more space than twenty copies of Stewart James’ back catalogue, I certainly find them easier to read in book form.
Contribute
This one isn’t for everyone, but some might find it useful. Many collaborative book and magazine publishers give away free copies to their contributors as remuneration (very few actually pay). So, if your magic is original you can swap them for allowing your tricks to be published.
Deals are good
I often run deals on my website where you buy one thing and get another free. In fact, I’m running two such deals right now (for a short time only). Buy Dominatricks and get Movers & Shakers for free, or buy The Session DVD and get Magic from The Session 2 for free. Of course, I’m not the only publisher doing deals, so hunt ‘em down and double your library for no extra money!
Purchase at the right time
I’m constantly analysing the magic book market and can often spot when a book will receive lots of interest and quickly become out of print. If you do this too, you can often pick up books before their prices become overly inflated and their contents become much sought after. In fact, if you’re really good at this kind of thing, you could buy two of the soon to be sought after books and sell your spare later down the line and use the money to buy more magic books! But, since that was my suggestion, you have to send me a 25% cut of your profits. Thanks.
The internet is the world’s biggest magic library
While there are very few online magic content producers, a few of them are worthy of your attention. Many people seem to dismiss the information that they find on the internet, but sites like your very own Clog, Online Visions, All Magic and so on frequently have some great essays and tricks.
That’s if for this short series of magic library articles, but I have plenty more information to share that I know you’ll want to read about. For example, I’ll shortly be starting another series on insuring your magic book collection.
Great posts Andi. I am just wondering though, when you said to print the eBooks. Aren’t there some that can’t be printed? So what should you do about those?
I personally haven’t purchased any ebooks that can’t be printed and would also never sell any.
Ebooks shouldn’t just be about reading on screen, so anyone does sell an ebook that can’t be printed should really consider whether they want people to learn their magic, or just make a quick buck or two without considering their customers. If they want you to learn the material from the ebook, they’ll let you read it on screen, or in a personal print-out.
Nice Points. Ok I have another question: Should you print single effect eBooks? Like, I am apart of the Kranzo Newsletter, and every so often I will receive a free “Mini” ebook from him, maybe like 3-6 pages. Should you immediately print those? Or perhaps wait and then accumulate more, combine them all, give it a nice cover page and then print it?
Alex, that’s purely personal preference. I’m not keen on having lots of loose sheets of paper around because I can never find them amongst my books, but other people may disagree. So, I’d suggest you try it out and see what works for you.
I think that really depends on whether that single trick is something that you think you would want to have easy access to or want to reference later on. If it is something you couldn’t ever imagine your self using, might not be worth taking up space with a stack of papers. Thanks again for the great posts Andi, really appreciate the points.
Cody
Personally I think its a great idea to do these for reference, just incase your looking up a credit or a particular move, it saves alot of time.
Plus you can read them on the go whether that be on a train, at lunch break at work.
And I never though about having the professionally bounded.
Daniel Chard