Vanishing Inc. Magic Blog

Are Magic Books Dead?

By Andi Gladwin -

We have been told for years that magic books are dead and that magicians don't read like they used to. We have been told that magicians consider themselves to be "visual learners" and that we shouldn't spend our time producing magic books.

Sure, it's much easier to produce a magic DVD, than a magic book. A new multi-disc DVD project might take us a couple of months to perfect, whereas a book is at least two years work for us. But that aside, we have always produced lots of magic books because it feels like the right thing to do. While other magic producers aim for the quick buck, we have always told people that we were playing the long game; that we wanted to improve magic, instead of flooding the market with rushed DVD projects.

But why produce magic books if there's only a small audience? Actually, it's quite simple: magic books aren't dead! They're thriving more than ever.

So far in 2019, we have sold 21% more magic books than magic DVDs. Compare that to the same period last year, where we sold 46% more DVDs than magic books.

The past few months have been good for magic book readers (Principia, The Magic Rainbow, and Game Changer, for example) and the market has reflected that.

So, magic books aren't dead — they're making a comeback! Magic DVDs however ... maybe they're the ones we should be worried about.

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Are Magic Books Dead? | Vanishing Inc. Magic Blog