The Genii Forum

Back in the early 1990s I signed a contract with Harvey Rosenthal to do a book on his coin magic, paid him a $3000 advance against royalties, and videotaped over 100 items on just under 10 hours of tape.

Without the time to complete this project, I will now sell it. You will receive 5 DVDs containing all the material (over 100 items of coin magic), plus a list of the contents of each DVD.

You will receive the original contract, which you will have to agree to honor in a new contract (details on the royalty will be discussed in private with someone who makes a serious offer).

The book is neither written nor illustrated/photographed. You are receiving the raw material from which to write it. You will have to contact Mr. Rosenthal regarding posing for photographs.

Mr. Rosenthal has additional coin material that we did not get to film, and he may make that available to you. He has also varied a few of the items in the intervening years, and may make this new material available as well (all of this would be between whomever purchases the rights to the book and him).

My asking price is a mere $3000--this is exactly what I paid Harvey as an advance against royalties (in other words, he doesn't receive any further royalties until he has received over $3000 worth). I will charge nothing for the many hours of work I did in making the videotapes.

NOTE: The videotapes are strictly of the homemade variety and are not suitable for any use other than to be watched in order to write the material. The videos may not be sold or released in any form and this will be part of the contract.

Please contact me privately at moobooks@verizon.net if you are interested.

Bump.

Bump.

Matt, be industrious. Borrow the dough and start a publishing business.

Seriously, there are only three enormous hardcover books on coin magic. I am handing the purchaser the material for a fourth. I can't believe there are no takers.

bump

I am in negotiations with a party regarding the sale of this property. It's not a done deal by any means, however they are seriously interested.

Richard Im putting up my Two Harvey Rosenthal manuscripts (close-up sampler parts 1 & 2 on ebay and was just wondering, was there ever any outcome on your selling the rosenthal coin book

The party backed out. I would be happy to sell it to anyone: over 100 very fine coin effects would make a great book.

Stumbled across discussions on books of Harvey's material which led me here. Has there been any progress made with this project yet?

Nothing has been done. The project is still available.

I see, thank you for the update. Hopefully someone will take up this offer, would be a shame to leave it unwritten. (I'd take it on myself, but with a student's income that's not possible, and I'm positive there are others out there who would do a much better job.)

If I could write and knew anything about publishing a book, I would try starting a kickstarter campaign to fund it.

It's not a question of the funding, but the work. Writing up coin tricks is very difficult, and this is an extremely large book. And then there are all the photographs (probably 1,000) to take--which means the author has to learn all the material.
The price is not high, only the $3,000 advance I paid to Harvey, but I can't possibly find the time to do it.

I'd love to do this. I think getting things past budgetary control might still be challenging.

If anyone wants to front up the purchase cost, I can do the heavy lifting. I have experience in writing up routines, and I have a spell checker...

Serious question; does anyone have experience with crowdfunding in the UK, and are there enough interested people out there that would contribute to a campaign if the perks were attractive enough?

You could do a Kickstarter for it. The $3,000 to purchase the project is not the problem. It will be an expensive book to produce because the photos require that it be printed on enamel stock. More expensive paper, heavier book, higher postage, etc.

Not trying to discourage you, Ian. Just want you to have a realistic view of where the bulk of the cost is going to go.

Thanks for the heads up. I think Kickstarter is only for US people (or at least it was at the start).

I was thinking about this last night. Perhaps some more sums are needed...

I wonder if Tomas would license his photo - line art software? I'm assuming that printing line drawings would be cheaper than the heavy stock? That might drop the postage costs as well?

Ian Kendall wrote:Thanks for the heads up. I think Kickstarter is only for US people (or at least it was at the start).

It's available in lots of countries now, including the UK:
https://www.kickstarter.com/learn?ref=w ... ickstarter

"Anyone in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, or Switzerland can start a project"

Ian Kendall wrote:...I wonder if Tomas would license his photo - line art software?...

If you are conversant with Photoshop, there are several 'actions' in the community that convert a photo into a pencil line drawing. I'm not sure whether this is something similar to Tomas', but it might be worth trying.