Books that are donated to libraries, unless extremely rare and sought after go to their money raising book sales and not on their shelves. Someone who bequeathed their lifelong collection of magic books to a library without the funds necessary to maintain and cataloger it would more than likely find that it either sits forgotten deep in the stacks or is sold off piece by piece in a fund raising book sale

I see no problem with this.
If someone is really interested they buy it.
If not they usually won't.
Same applies to the Internet where there are lots more they could purchase.

You know it's weird. Everyone suggests Royal Road to new card guys. I would consider that good stuff. I have seen Royal Road, all the Hugard stuff, Bobo and so much more in the magic section of Barnes and Noble and other stores. Don't get me wrong, it dosen't bother me. But I would consider those to be good, professional texts.

What baffles me is that I have seen people torn apart on this site for putting a silly trick on a website. Called out for exposure and ravaged. Sometimes it seems funny to me when I see someone get on their high horse, rip someone up (usually a newbie) for exposure and those same people have never posted about the fact that the tools of the professional are sometimes available at the local bookstore or even COMPLETLY FREE at the local library. I haven't seen anyone on this thread come out against it.

It dosen't bother me, I've found some good books there.

Vandy

P.S. Please don't misunderstand, exposure is an important issue but I'm trying to keep it in perspective.

It depends on how one defines exposure. I don't think a book teaching the pass is exposure. I think a book teaching how Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear is exposure. Showing how specific performers do specific things is exposure. Showing basic techniques isn't.

I'm with ya Irish. I am thinking about a guy who was going to put a little coin trick on his website and got torn up. It was nobody's property. Just a simple sleight that most people know anyway. The site was for those with an intrest in magic. I agree basically with the description of exposure that you gave above. Perspective. Like I said, the bookstore situation dosen't bother me. I just expected a little more consternation from some of our more "vigilant" members.

Vandy

I think you have to be interested in magic in the first place to care about a magic book. When you go into a shop you only pick up a book that interests you, and besides everyone has to start somewhere.

It looks like there's a consensus here, and I agree with it. Only those willing to study the books will get anything out of them; laymen looking for secrets will forget any secrets they read, if they even pick up any of these books and read them. For those who do study them, the books are invaluable for getting started in magic.

Are there bookstores with for example "AoA" on the shelfes? I have never seen this here in the UK.

Magixx

When I was in 5th grade, our school library had a book titled "Houdini". It was monsterously old, huge, thick, wordy, and filled with anything you would have wanted to know about how he (Houdini) performed his miricles as well as some history to boot. There were blueprints and scketches of various devices that he used, techniques for identifying handcuffs and how to escape from them, etc. I must have checked that book out 100 times, and every time I was late returning it. I even tried to accidently "forget" to return it at the end of the year, but of course I was discovered and had to give it back. I have never seen another copy of that book since then. I don't know the publisher or Author, but I really wish I did.

Almost twenty years (just shy) later, I'm sitting in my apartment typing a post on a web-board about magic books, with two straight jackets hanging in the closet and a box filled with assorted hancuffs and escape equipment on my shelf. If it wasn't for me finding that book in a grade-school library, I probably would not have started delving into escapology. (Granted I did at that point already own the Klutz book of magic, Mark Wilsons and the Magic Handbook - so I was not new to the art of magic)

That book was a terribly difficult read for me in 5th grade. But it was worth it. I gained so much insight from that book as to the workings of vaudville illusions, escape trunks, the workings of the chineese water torture cell, mail-bag escape, ...the list goes on and on. I practically memorized as many of the diagrams and schematics that I could.

Anyway, I don't think anybody else would have read through that book if they weren't truely interested in it. They would have picked it up, and probably put it down within the first 50 pages. But because it was accessable to anyone in that school, at least one 5th grader who was genuinely interested in magic used it to his advantage.

jlareau

If these "laymen" stores didn't carry these types of books, then I never would have discovered magic. I imagine that this is quite true for many new magicians. So I guess my vote is FOR them.

We should be careful about thinking that we should have some sort of monopoly on this material, or that it should only be sold in musty little shops that require a secret decoder ring to get through the door.

If this material were harder to access, how many fellow magicians would we now be missing?

Based on some of the comments I've seen here, not nearly enough.

I worked at a Career Symposium yesterday. It is a trade fair about careers. During the day, students from grade 6 - 12 toured the exhibits and talked about making plans for their future.

I encouraged them to stay in school. To draw them towards the booth, I performed magic. Many students asked how they could learn to do magic. I told that everything I performed was in books. Some asked for autographs, so I signed...

"The magic is in books. Have fun! - El Lamo"

Where I live the public library system owns a copy of Simon Aronson's "Try The Impossible," a top-of-the-line book of killer secrets. I've checked it out twice.

However, if I were a relative newcomer to magic I wouldn't enjoy it. It was only being shown some pieces using Aronson's methods at my local Ring meeting that I got the itch to learn it. I bought "Bound To Please" for my own library and was just geeked to learn that I could borrow the other one from the public library.

I'm confident that if I show someone an illusion out of "Try The Impossible," and someone says, "Where'd you learn that?" they'll be blown away a second time when I say, "In a library book." I just don't think the general public borrows these books much. It's the same with everything. I don't borrow books on home improvement, for example, but I'm sure there are some gems on those subjects in the public library.

I'm not going to be like Jeff McBride and make the books on magic disappear from the library permanently. I'll just be comfortable knowing that I can borrow "Try The Impossible" again when I want to pull one of those routines back to performance level.

CSR

And my experience is, that you can't find more books in normal book store, which go deeper into the materia than the normal "beginner books" - well, at least not here in the UK.

Magixx

I'm not sure about magic books in library’s and bookstores. Through our library system we can get this bundle of several books (the Klutz one and others) it also has one of Mark Wilson's Video Course in Magic videos. In a local bookstore we can get Bobo! I think that carrying Bobo is a little too much because Bobo has so much material that magicians use every day.

Consider this...The Bible is in book stores...but if you aint interested then you aint gonna read it just for fun.

Howard

I don't see what the big deal is.
I've seen libraries with the Tarbell Course... and Dai Vernon's Inner Card Trilogy. But that doesn't mean that everyone who walks into the library will read and study them.

Hey, when I was younger, I remember getting my copies of Hugard's Card Manipulations and Expert Card Technique at a regular bookstore in the Hobby section.

I found Bobo's modern coin magic at a bookstore when I was starting, and that really got me interested in magic, so how could I say I wouldn't want it. Maybe some kid who made up a coin trick buys this, studies it and become world famous, who knows.

I don´t think it representes a real danger to the magic comunity.If you want to learn an effect by meens of a book,you have to reed manny times the same complex text.Laymen are not motivated to do it.
Don´t worry be Magic.
Fernando

I agree with everyone else in that magic books in a bookstore/library is a good thing. It allows beginners to get into magic. Were material more difficult to access, there would be less magicians today. When laymen see a magic book sitting around, they won't really read it. Flip through a few pages, done. Only those who are truly interested in magic will seek out the material in bookstores and libraries and actually read and understand the book.