My first essay after 4 years,

This is a synopsis of everything that has been haunting my mind, I will try to be as short as possible.
4 years ago I was 17, I was hoping to be those kind of geniuses that prance around magic websites home pages, with the latest new amazing effect or discovery on mentalism. I wanted to have a catchy video featuring me doing some amazing effects in front of people, now that I look at this with some distance I find it totally stupid, and I blame myself for having such hopes.

Then I'm watching this E-book market raising, with custumers that promotes eachothers works in some sort of closed circle, attributing prizes and fame to some product to get some self obtained promotion. All of this is camouflaged by the will of keeping the trades and the ''credits'' proper to inspirational sources, where probably everyone have already traded e-books over the internet and blaming others for doing so...

I think some people really wish to contribute their thougths and they have small means or ways of doing so... But part of the fact that people sells it in E-book is because it's the easiest, cost-free way for selling things, and making it VERY lucrative. Let's face it, the intention of writing those things is to make cash, and sometimes there is no will of making costumers feels like they buy good products (because they have back up groupies)

I'm not trying to be provocative here, I'm trying to give an example of why I think the lucrative part in the magic industry is completly ruining it, thus being part of the reason I have left the community. I sum it up this way;

You don't have to be a self said genius or elitist to create, all you need is creativity and will. Selling things is making things available to everyone,keeping it makes you unique. and sharing it with freinds makes it evolve.

If you have good intentions you will have respect in the long turn and good things will happen to you.

You do have good points but you also have to understand underlying forces that may be giving rise to the E-book scene. You Tube is a powerful tool for a 21st century magician. No I am not talking about the dweebs who get an effect, practice it for 10mn and then shoot a vid either intentionally or unintentionally exposing an effect. I'm simply referring to magicians marketing themselves on the inter-net. Now testimonial videos don't show much magic so that is not the big problem but I think most magicians will probably post a few videos actually showing them in action. If what they want to show off is something they created on their own then they are faced with the reality that even an honest, well shot video, that is free from all "flashes" or other mistakes, may still "tip" the method. Goes back to the old adage, "once is magic and twice is a lesson!" So if you want to share your performances of original material you are faced with the conundrum. "If I don't release this and get my name on this someone else just might!" I realize that the rise of the e-book has also led to the rize of some really stupid ideas but stupid ideas are nothing new to the magic world. Indeed....take a cold hard look at 13 steps to Mentalism. Yes there are a ton of great routines in there and it will teach you all the fundimantal methods that will set you on the way to performing Mentalism and Mental Magic but there are also a whole lot if incredibly stupid ideas in that book. I would argue that many of those stupid ideas were stupid at the time the book was released! Indeed if you study that book you will notice several chapters where Corrinda seems very defensive about certain effects. This leaves me to conjecture that there were other mentalists at the time who told him that those ideas were stupid before he ever published the effects.

(Not trying to pick on Corinda here. 13 Steps is a fantastic book! I'm just saying that about 1/3 of it could be cut and I doubt anyone would miss it.)

I'm with eostresh here. In today's fast paced world, where information flows freely if you want to make claim to your creations you have to do it quick, and e-books are a quick and easy way to do so. The thing to remember here is that if it's crap it will be sorted out over time.

We have all these classics handed down to us and forget that when they came out there was a sea of crap that they had to rise above themselves, hence how they became classics.

So let the stupid stuff flow, it helps us realize just how good the good stuff is, and it will be sorted out over time. It's all ok...