Monthly Update #20 (August 2024)
Independent magic book publishing, thoughts on finger-snapping and a classic Blaine ACR performance.
Well, that’s two-thirds of the year done already! Don’t freak out, but there are only 115 days until Christmas! 🎄😉
This month, I’ve been trying to make progress on my book Developing Daley. The main takeaway is that I’ve decided to publish the project as a series of five books! Doing this will make it economically viable to print physical copies of each volume for those who prefer ink on paper (more discussion on this in a moment). I will be subtitling the series “An Exhaustive Exploration of Dr. Daley’s Last Trick”—this seemed appropriate for a series of books featuring fifty-two variations of the same darn card trick!
I also share my initial thoughts on a new downloadable magic tutorial called “Retwisting the Aces” by Spanish magician Josep Vidal. Josep takes nearly an hour to teach his personal handling of Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces”. I’ll probably develop this into a full review and post it to my blog once I’ve watched the whole video. Currently, there are only three reviews on Marty’s Bag of Tricks because I only like to review a product if I can include some helpful insights or tips in the write-up:
Read All Reviews on Marty’s Bag of Tricks 👈
Hopefully, I’ll find the motivation to write more reviews in the final third of the year.
Finally, I share my thoughts on finger snapping and using Top Trumps in the performance of magic. Top Trumps is a popular card game first published in 1978 (I got my first packs in the late 1980s). Each card contains a list of numerical data related to the subject of the card. The game’s aim is to compare these values in an attempt to “trump” your opponent and win their card. Various packs are available, making them a handy alternative to traditional playing cards.
Right, let’s get going!
The Perils and Pitfalls of Self-Publication
I’m pleased to report that I’ve made good progress on my book Developing Daley. In fact, I decided to split the project into five separate books! I’m doing this so that I can produce physical copies of each volume. Creating one gigantic tome makes sense if its only ever going to be released digitally as an ebook. However, a few subscribers asked if I could produce hard copies. So, although self-publishing a magic book is fraught with difficulties, I’ve decided to give it my best shot!
If you’re a paid subscriber, you can find a link to the working draft of Developing Daley Volume 1 on the perks page. Feel free to comment on the document if something is unclear. I’m currently working on Chapter 3: Ten Basic Handlings.
The only experience I have of self-publishing is the creation of a couple of photo books using a company called Blurb more than ten years ago. My experience was very positive. The result was a high-quality photo book with excellent colour reproduction in both cases. However, I only needed a handful of copies for family members, so the overall cost of each book wasn’t an important factor. With delivery, a 30-page photo book cost me £27.69 (about $36). Today, the same book would cost me £36.39 (about $48), approximately 31% more. This high cost is why some people refer to these services as “vanity publishers”, which I think is slightly unfair. Those books delighted the people I gave them to, mso were well worth what I paid for them.
However, if I want to make even a small profit, I need to use a service that will reduce the cost per book to a more reasonable amount. It turns out that even when you change the format and adjust the quality of the paper and printing, this is very difficult, if not impossible, with a service like Blurb.
How Big Will Each Book Be?
I’m working on the assumption that each book will be between 250 and 300 pages long. With a book this size, I can fit approximately twelve tricks in each volume, along with two or three theoretical essays. Looking at the tutorials on my blog, I tend to write very detailed instructions. Typically, I’ll write between two and five thousand words for a tutorial. For example, my last three tutorials related to this project had the following word counts:
Quick Change Queens = 2760 words
Laughing Boy and Lumberjack = 4028 words
The Jaybird Jump = 5414 words
That’s an average of about four thousand words per trick. Depending on the topic, my essays tend to be between two and five thousand words. Of course, I’ll edit the text to make it more suitable for print. However, I don’t want to lose the detail. The additional ideas, tips and footnotes are often my favourite parts of a magic book. It would be a shame to omit these things simply to make the books affordable in print form.
The traditional way to calculate the number of pages in your finished book is to assume each page will contain approximately 250 words. However, this rule of thumb was based on manuscripts written on typewriters using monospaced fonts. Looking at my draft in Google Docs, which uses a modern font designed for print, a full page of text is closer to 340 words. With this in mind, I’ve still chosen to stick with the traditional estimation of 250 words per page because I plan to include several hand-drawn illustrations in the book. Naturally, this will significantly reduce the average number of words per page.
Therefore, including twelve tricks (12 × 4,000 words) and three essays (3 × 5,000) gives me 63,000 words in total. This equates to 252 pages. I’m also including ten basic handlings of Dr. Daley’s Last Trick in the first book. This chapter is likely to be at least 10,000 words long. So, the first book will have roughly 292 pages. As a result, I’ve based my pricing calculations on an upper limit of 300 pages per volume. Doing some research into bookmaking, I found this to be a good size for a book because it gives you a spine thick enough to make the book stable on a bookshelf and wide enough to accommodate the book’s title.
Premium or Economy Finish?
Many of the best magic books produced today have a premium finish to justify a higher price point. This is needed because the market for an instructional magic book is tiny compared to a cookbook by a famous chef or a work of fiction featured on the New York Times best-seller list.
It is difficult to guess the average print run for a popular magic book. As this is commercially sensitive information, it isn’t readily available. Vanishing Inc. Magic, currently the world’s largest publisher of magic books, often produces two or three hundred “deluxe” versions of a book aimed at collectors (more luxurious than their usual premium offering). Therefore, I’m guessing the print run for the regular edition must be at least 700, or maybe even several thousand, to achieve the required price point.
Publishers like Vanishing Inc. Magic also use offset printing when producing a large quantity of books. This method involves transferring an inked image from a metal plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface itself. Four custom plates are made for the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) inks used in printing. The printing press is usually quite large, and once it is run, printing extra books is impossible. For the same reason, you cannot print a single proof book before the full press run, unlike when you use digital printing techniques.
Blurb has written a helpful guide to offset printing if you want to learn more. Offset printing also enables the inclusion of premium features, such as embossing, custom end sheets, foil stamping, headbands/footbands, and ribbons (see the page on custom book printing options on the Blurb website).
For trade books—a more suitable format for text-heavy projects—Blurb requires a minimum order of 750+ books to use offset printing. This is because a higher volume is needed to keep things cost-effective compared to digital printing. For this reason alone, it is highly unlikely that I’ll be able to use offset printing for Developing Daley (unless I run a very successful Kickstarter campaign to raise the upfront capital for a deluxe edition). Therefore, I will first explore print-on-demand (POD) options from companies like Blurb, Lulu, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), IngramSpark, and Bookvault. This means that the finish will not be premium, e.g., illustrations will be black and white, the paper stock will be thinner, and the book will likely be a paperback (although I will try to make it a hardcover if possible).
How Much Will Each Book Cost?
Magic books of a similar length sold by Vanishing Inc. Magic retail for around $50 (just under £40). To me, this seems too high a price for a four-volume set. If you want to buy all four books, it will set you back a whopping two hundred bucks plus shipping (approximately £160)! Postal charges could cost anything from $10 to $20 per book for people in the US. So, the total cost of owning the four volumes could stretch to as much as $280 (well over £200). This seems ridiculous for this type of project from a no-name magician (even if I’m confident that the material has a lot of value).
I’ve used the pricing calculator on the Blurb website to estimate an accurate cost of production for a single POD book. I’ve decided on an 8 by 10-inch (20 by 25cm) trade hardback with a casewrap (the cover art is printed onto paper wrapped and glued onto the book’s cardboard case). Here are the different costs, depending on the printing and paper used:
Standard Black and White Printing = $33.79 or £22.27
Economy Colour Printing = $35.31 or £24.79
Standard Colour Printing = $69.91 or £49.11
Standard black-and-white printing uses uncoated paper that’s 75 GSM. GSM stands for Grams per Square Meter; the higher the value, the heavier the paper. Note that this is not a measure of thickness but weight. However, heavier paper does, on the whole, tend to be thicker. Economy colour printing uses the same uncoated paper, but the stock is a little heavier at 105 GSM. Finally, standard colour printing also uses this thicker paper. As you can see from the costs above, standard colour printing is prohibitively expensive for a project like Developing Daley.
Printing the book using Blurb will cost me about $35. I might as well print in colour as the difference between colour and black-and-white printing is negligible. Therefore, I’d need to price each volume at $50 to make a modest profit. Adding the delivery cost may push the total to $55 or even $60!
So what’s the solution? Most likely, using a cheaper POD service, such as Amazon KDP. Even though I hate the stranglehold Amazon has over writers and small publishing houses, KDP does look like a good service offered at a reasonable price. Using their royalty calculator, a list price of $35 (£25) looks possible. This would result in a printing cost of $10.75 (£7.75) per book, giving me an estimated royalty of $10.25 (£7.25) per book sold. This would result in a profit of almost 30%. Even if I end up paying the higher income tax rate of 40% on this, the profit margin would still be a reasonably healthy 17%.
Another option is IngramSpark. A book of equivalent quality would cost me £13.44 to ship to a customer in the UK and $16.54 to someone in the US (according to their pricing calculator). So, it looks like IngramSpark is slightly more expensive than Amazon KDP. The company also have a reputation for poor customer service. However, IngramSpark makes it easier for physical bookshops to stock your book because this is the company most independant bookshops use as a wholesaler (although using IngramSpark doesn’t guarantee it). I found a helpful PDF guide to independant publishing on their website, which you can download below.
I also plan to offer each volume as an ebook. I can do this via Amazon, which will pay a 35% royalty for each sale if the book is priced over $9.99. If I set a price of $25 (about 30% cheaper than the printed book), I can expect a royalty payment of $12.25 per book sold.
However, I’m contemplating using a site like Gumroad to sell digital copies of the books. Gumroad has a flat-rate fee of 10%, and I’ve used them in the past. The only other charge is the credit card processing fee from Stripe:
UK fees are 1.5% + 20p = 50p
EU fees are 2.5% + 20p = 70p
US fees are 2.9% + 30¢ = $1.25
Assuming the ebook’s price is $25 (£20), this would result in a profit margin of 85%—much more than Amazon’s measly 35% offering. For the sake of my readers, I’ll probably put it on both platforms, even though this will reduce the ebook’s profitability.
Taking all of these estimates into consideration, I’m settling on the following price structure:
$35 for each physical book. $175 for all four volumes.
$25 for each ebook. $125 for all four volumes.
$42 for both. A special code in the book will allow people to download the ebook from Gumroad for the discounted price of $7. Therefore, you’ll be able to own all five physical and digital books for $210.
This structure is based on what Vanishing Inc. Magic recently started offering. The ebook is 25% cheaper than the physical book, and the bundle option is 30% cheaper than buying both separately. This pricing structure also gives me a little headroom to run occasional promotions (I’ll provide the most generous offer to Ruseletter subscribers).
I think that these prices seem fair and reasonable. What do you think?
How Many Copies Do I Hope to Sell?
I’m not entirely sure how many books I might sell. I’d be more than happy if I managed to sell one hundred physical copies of the book. In fact, I’d be over the moon! 🌕 This would earn me £2,644.73, which, after income tax, would be approximately £1986.84 (about $2,621). Taking the cost of production into account, this would yield a per-book profit of £12.25, which is about $16. Honestly, my primary motivation for writing the book is not financial gain. I want to document these ideas and, to a certain extent, put them to bed so I can move on to other things. With this aim in mind, the number of books I manage to sell is irrelevant. But it would be nice to sell a few copies!
Interestingly, due to how income tax allowance works in the UK, if I sold more, for example, five hundred books, I’d make less profit per book ($11 instead of $16). However, the total amount earned would be much greater at £13,227.18 (£8336.31 after tax). This is approximately $11,000 after tax. Yes, this scenario is extremely unlikely, but it does highlight the challenges of writing, printing and selling a low-volume niche non-fiction book. There are much easier ways to make money!
Releasing an ebook version of each book provides an opportunity to make a little more profit per volume. Again, if I sold one hundred copies, I’d earn £1,888.97 (£1533.38 after tax). This would yield a £15.33 profit per book (about $20). So, $5 of the book price would be lost to Gumroad, Stripe and the UK taxman. If, by some miracle, I sold 500 copies, I’d make £9,444.85 (£6066.91 after tax). This equates to a profit of £12 per book ($9).
I’m being transparent about these financial projections to show how difficult it is to self-publish a physical magic book and turn a profit. Even though this will be a challenging project, I’m confident I can deliver a good quality physical book for a fair price.
I’ll share more information about my progress on my blog and in future Ruseletter updates.
Developing Daley Planning Board
To stay on track, I’ve created a Trello planning board to help me complete the Developing Daley project in a timely fashion. The links below will automatically filter the board to show you the cards related to each volume:
I’m currently writing Chapter 3 of Volume 1, which will feature ten basic handings of the red and black Ace transposition.
Retwisting the Aces
Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces” is one of my go-to packet tricks when performing for someone for the first time. For this reason, I was very excited to discover “Retwisting the Aces” by Spanish magician Josep Vidal.
In the almost hour-long video, he teaches his personal touches on this classic card magic effect. Now, if you’re looking for a new, innovative method, you’ll be disappointed. What Josep teaches is, essentially, Vernon’s method from More Inner Secrets of Card Magic (1960). However, he shares something arguably more valuable: psychological touches to make each magical moment in the routine more impactful.
In addition to this, he also demonstrates how you can add a coin production to the end of the trick. A coin materialises from underneath the Ace of Diamonds in a very eerie manner. While I like this idea, the additional phase feels incomplete. Producing three or four coins from the Ace of Diamonds would be better; this would leave you in a position to perform a Matrix routine with the coins and four Aces.
I enjoy projects like this that demonstrate how to personalise a magic trick, especially one as well-known as “Twisting the Aces”. Even if you don’t use Josep’s ideas, you can still benefit from his thought processes and apply them to other tricks in your repertoire.
The video is well-shot and edited and features a full studio performance of the effect. My only criticism is that it was too long. The teaching could have been far more succinct; however, this might be partly due to Josep’s not being completely fluent in English. Overall, I highly recommend this instant download, which is available from Penguin Magic.
Oh Snap! 🫰
I recently read an insightful article by Rory Adams about why magicians snap their fingers. The article explains that when a magician snaps his fingers, he’s “timestamping” the moment the magic happens:
If you take a coin, pretend to pass it from one hand to the other, and then open your hand, and the coin is gone. A child (and some adults) will immediately assume the coin is still in your first hand.
This is why timestamping an illusion is so essential. By passing the coin to the second hand and then snapping your fingers, you timestamp the moment of magic.
You’re subconsciously telling the audience the coin is there up until the moment you snap your fingers.
(You can read the first few paragraphs for free at One Ahead. However, you’ll need a paid subscription to read the full article: Why Magicians Snap Fingers.)
I like this terminology because it compliments the idea that magicians create pictures, images or snapshots—my preferred term—for our audiences to remember. Both analogies come from the idea that a person’s perceptive abilities function like a digital camera. 📷
For Vernon’s “Triumph” to be a successful card trick, you must ensure that your spectator has taken a “mental snapshot” of the cards in a face-up, face-down mess. You then snap your fingers to indicate—or timestamp—the exact moment the cards sort themselves out. You slowly ribbon spread the cards to create a second snapshot of all the cards face down. Finally, you keep spreading to reveal that the chosen playing card is the only face-up card in the face-down deck. This is the final snapshot you want to create in your spectator’s mind. I’ve noticed that many magicians do not create the third snapshot when performing “Triumph”. They spread the cards too quickly, revealing the presence of the face-up selection before the audience has been given time to appreciate the righting of the deck.
Constructing your routines to induce the correct snapshots and timestamps is an excellent way to improve the lasting impact of your magic.
Thrown for a Fruit Loop!
One of my favourite performances by David Blaine is the Ambitious Card routine he performs for a guy named Fruit Loops during his first TV special (maybe the guy’s real name is Sam Toucan)!
During the performance, David invites Fruit Loops to snap his fingers over the deck to make the magic happen, effectively bestowing magical powers upon his participant (albeit temporarily). This might not seem like a big deal, but before Blaine, such involvement wasn’t common. Typically, it was the all-powerful magician who did the snapping.
This seemingly simple act carries profound implications. By entrusting the participant with the magical gesture, Blaine breaks from tradition and creates a uniquely interactive experience. This moment of whimsy taps into the deep-seated human desire for play—something we’re often forced to leave behind as we grow up and become adults.
The social contract implicit in a magic trick’s performance gives people a valid excuse to engage in playful behaviour without fear of criticism or judgment. It provides a sanctioned space for grown-ups to rediscover their inner child and revel in a state of pure wonder and joy.
By generously sharing the spotlight with Fruit Loops, Blaine not only enhances the impact of his Ambitious Card routine but also reminds us of the immense value in embracing playfulness at any age. It’s a powerful demonstration that letting go of adult inhibitions, even briefly, can be both liberating and delightful, fostering human connection and rekindling our sense of imagination. This is one of the things that makes magic such an unusual and unique performance art.
Even so, relinquishing control to a participant in this way is a double-edged sword. At one point, Fruit Loops is so eager to be involved in the magic that he turns the top card over before Blaine instructs him to snap his fingers. To cover this mistake, Blaine suggests that another secret move, gently tossing the deck upward, is responsible for the card rising to the top.
Usually, I don’t like it when a magician uses multiple magical gestures. It can confuse the audience because it’s unclear which action caused the magic. Was it the mystical pass over the deck or the finger snapping? In this case, however, it was a corrective measure on Blaine’s part. He changed tactics to cover the inconsistency introduced by his participant.
It’s evident that Fruit Loops is not convinced that the snap does the magic. Nonetheless, the snap still focuses everyone’s attention on the moment the magic apparently happens. It also creates distance between the method and the effect. So, even if the audience understands that silly magic words and odd magical actions do nothing, they still play an important role in focusing attention and clarifying the magical effect.
Top Trumps and Magic
In the same article on finger snapping on One Ahead, Rory shares an inventive magic trick that, better than any other, justifies using the finger snap as a magical gesture. In the ingenious card trick, he uses a deck of Marvel Avengers Endgame Top Trumps to simulate the moment Thanos erases 50% of life in the universe from existence. It’s a clever way to incorporate pop culture into your magic, making it more relatable and exciting for audiences. Just like the Mad Titan himself, you demonstrate that your magic is inevitable!
Out of respect for Rory, I won’t discuss his method for the trick (it’s very good). As a lifelong comic book geek, this magic trick is right up my street, and I’ll definitely be performing it as soon as I can get my hands on a deck of the cards in question.
The cards Rory recommends for the trick were printed in 2020, so they will get increasingly difficult to source. (At the time of writing this article, they’re still widely available, at least in the UK.) However, Winning Moves, the company that has printed Top Trumps since 1992, continues to produce Marvel-themed decks that could work as alternatives if you can’t find this specific product.
Rory’s use of Top Trumps reminded me of a remarkable discovery I made years ago concerning a deck of Ben 10-themed Top Trumps. The cards glowed in the dark. Amazingly, because of the unique ink on their faces, the cards acted as an impromptu Invisible Deck! It was possible to put the cards into rough and smooth pairs straight out of the box without treating them in any way.
To use the cards in a trick, I wrote a list of the thirty alien characters featured in the deck onto a large piece of paper. I asked someone to pick one of the names from the list.
Using the written list as an open crib, I separated the correct pair of cards to show that the named card was the only one face up in the face-down deck. There were 15 pairs in total. Depending on which character was chosen, I’d sometimes need to secretly flip over the deck under the cover of the paper with the list of characters written on it.
I still have a couple of these packs somewhere. These were printed in 2008, and if you want to perform this trick as described, you’ll need the specific cards named “Top Trump Specials Ben 10”. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find a pack for sale on eBay. The other Ben 10 decks don’t work because they don’t have the special glow-in-the-dark coating.
Top Trumps are a seriously underused prop by magicians. Their variety and widespread availability make them a versatile and accessible prop for magicians. My accidental discovery highlights how creative thinking and keen observation can lead to unique magical effects. It’s a reminder that magic can be found in unexpected places and that props don’t always have to be traditional playing cards.
This accidental finding is a fantastic example of how you can find magic potential in everyday items.
(In America, you can buy Top Trumps from the Top Trumps store or their official Amazon shop. In the UK, you can purchase the cards from many high street shops and the Winning Moves website.)
Three Videos Worth Watching
And finally, here are three videos that I watched this month that I think you might enjoy, too.
Chris Pratt’s Epic Card Trick Fail
I’ve viewed this video many times. I never get tired of watching Jennifer Lawerence’s reaction to Chris Pratt’s epic card trick fail live on BBC TV. (Watch the video before reading my commentary below it).
This performance exemplifies that strong acting skills can elevate even the simplest of magic tricks. The primary move used in the trick is the Glide—a basic sleight of hand manoeuvre. However, Chris demonstrates a good level of competence in executing the move. He understands how to hold and display the cards to make the Glide look natural. However, what truly stands out is his ability to craft a compelling narrative through his acting.
Jennifer’s visible discomfort and embarrassment throughout the performance serve as a testament to his skill in portraying an overconfident, possibly misguided individual. This tension is palpable and adds an extra layer of suspense to the routine, keeping the audience engaged. From Jennifer’s perspective, Chris is not a seasoned magician but an actor about to make a fool of himself on live television. This misdirection is crucial to the success of the “magician in trouble” plotline. (This is a difficult feat for a performer who is already known as a magician to pull off. Chris has the advantage of being an actor, not a magician, so expectations are already low.)
By playing up the character of an overly confident yet bumbling amateur magician, Chris cleverly subverts the audience’s expectations. In the end, the successful execution of the trick feels more surprising and satisfying because the audience—and Jennifer—have been led to believe that failure is inevitable. This blend of narrative tension, character work, and technical skill is what makes this performance from Chris so compelling.
Maybe the next magic book you read shouldn’t be a magic book at all, but An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski! 😉
I’d love to know where Chris learnt the trick he calls “Burn ’em”. I’m guessing he probably learned it from a friend or family member as a kid.
The World’s Largest Interactive Card Trick
David Blaine performed what might be the world’s largest interactive magic trick at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event. D23 is the official Disney Fan Club (the D stands for Disney, and the 23 for 1923, the year the company was founded).
I love the effort he put into this performance. David commissioned a custom-designed deck for this one trick! I like the way he frames the Cut Deeper Force.
I also noticed that David performed his Ambitious Card at the same event (see video from IGN). This is the same one he performed for Fruit Loops in his first TV special in the late 1990s.
Heart of Fire by Patricio Teran ♥🔥
Finally, I really like the look of this new trick called Heart of Fire by Patricio Teran and Big Blind Media. I haven’t bought it yet. I just hope it isn’t too impractical to perform in the real world.
That’s all for this month.
Yours Magically,
Marty