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    How to Make a Living as a Professional Magician: Business First, Sleight-of-Hand Later
    How to Make a Living as a Professional Magician: Business First, Sleight-of-Hand Later
    How to Make a Living as a Professional Magician: Business First, Sleight-of-Hand Later
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    How to Make a Living as a Professional Magician: Business First, Sleight-of-Hand Later

    By Matt Patterson

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    About this ebook

    You may be able to pull off an impressive card trick, but can you recruit new clients and tailor your show to different occasions? In the only guide of its kind, professional magician Magnus shows you the ins and outs of managing your career in magic. His tried-and-true methods will convert you — presto, change-o — into a successful professional.
    Magnus will help you with developing the persistence and conviction you'll need for a career in close-up magic, making your pitch to potential employers, and promoting and marketing your act. He'll advise you on the tricks that will provide you with the most mileage — the time-tested audience-pleasers that can be performed in a wide variety of situations — and the best ways to practice them to ensure a smooth execution. His advice on cultivating skills that contribute to a successful performance, getting along with coworkers, and handling hecklers will save you untold aggravation and smooth the path toward a magical career.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateFeb 13, 2019
    ISBN9780486837697
    How to Make a Living as a Professional Magician: Business First, Sleight-of-Hand Later

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      Book preview

      How to Make a Living as a Professional Magician - Matt Patterson

      Copyright

      Copyright © 1999, 2019 by Matt Patterson

      All rights reserved.

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is a revised and updated republication of Blood, Sweat, and Pinky Breaks: A Practical Guide to Making a Living with Close-up Magic, self-published by Magnus in 1999. This edition adds a new preface, introduction, and other chapters.

      Photograph Credits

      All photographs in chapters 2 and 6 by Dave Blehm

      Photograph in Interlude: Mentoring by Matt Patterson

      International Standard Book Number

      ISBN-13: 978-0-486-82612-7

      ISBN-10: 0-486-82612-0

      Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

      82612001 2019

      www.doverpublications.com

      To the owners and staff of the

      Goat & Clover Pub

      in Grand Junction

      CONTENTS

      Preface to the 2019 Edition

      Foreword

      Introduction: The Close-Up Tradition

      Chapter 1: Are You Ready?

      Chapter 2: Material

      Chapter 3: Venues

      Chapter 4: Making Your Case

      Interlude: Practice

      Chapter 5: Coworkers

      Interlude: Supplementary Education

      Chapter 6: At the Tables

      Interlude: Taxes and Finance

      Chapter 7: Promotion and Marketing

      Interlude: Mentoring

      Chapter 8: Private Parties

      Afterword: Being a Professional

      PREFACE TO THE 2019 EDITION

      Twenty years ago, I wrote a manual for people considering close-up magic as a career. Blood, Sweat, and Pinky Breaks was published to generally good reviews, with sales surpassing what I had dared hope for.

      Subsequently, I came to realize why it had found an audience: While conjuring is an ancient and noble profession, and the literature of our craft is vast and wide-ranging, there were few volumes dealing with the actual business of magic—especially close-up.

      That’s a shame. It is all well and good to learn card tricks. But turning that talent into a means of paying the rent is another thing entirely.

      So when I embarked on my career as a close-up artist, there was no widely available treatise on what it took to perform for a living. Fortunately, I met several close-up mavens along the way and learned a lot from them. You’ll meet some of them in this book. I learned the rest the hard (and best) way—through trial and error, a painful process that took years.

      When my career was over, I resolved to set down what I had learned from my mentors and the street, so that the information could be of use to others. The book, as small and modestly packaged as it was, filled an important niche in the marketplace.

      I am very grateful to Dover Publications for the opportunity to revise and expand it for a new generation of close-up artists.

      Close-up magic is more popular than ever before, thanks to the television specials of David Blaine, the Broadway shows of card sharp Ricky Jay, and the America’s Got Talent–winning magic of Mat Franco, among many others.

      In fact, the opportunities for close-up—both to enjoy it and perform it—are greater than they have ever been.

      I hope that this edition, like the original, will be of use to aspiring close-up magicians. Of course, much has changed since 1999, though not as much as one might think.

      So let’s get to it, shall we?

      Magnus

      Minneapolis

      2017

      FOREWORD

      Let me explain.

      No, really. I want to explain why I wrote this book.

      You may want to know what right I have writing a book like this and why, if the secrets contained herein are so valuable, I have chosen to divulge them. These are fair questions, so I shall address them at the outset.

      Let me first set forth what I do not claim.

      I do not claim to be the best close-up magician in the world—far from it.

      I do not claim to have gotten rich by performing close-up magic.

      I do not claim to know everything there is to know about close-up—or even everything there is to know about making a living at close-up.

      Having said all that, here is what I do claim.

      For ten years, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, I relied on close-up magic as my sole source of income. (I also worked at the counter of a magic shop for a year. I consider it time served.) I performed in several different counties, across multiple states, for many thousands of people. I worked in every type of venue: restaurants, private parties, corporate events, cruise ships, trade shows—you name it.

      I was an entertaining performer of close-up magic, and I know a great deal about what it takes to make a living at close-up. Most importantly, I have an excellent grasp of what not to do.

      The years I spent performing close-up for a living were often tough. Generally speaking, it got better each year. The more time that went by, the greater the rewards were, both financially and artistically.

      It was always interesting. Every night I met cool people, and even in the worst of times, I had a blast performing for them. How many people can say that about their jobs?

      In November 1997, my close-up career came to an abrupt halt. I was in an automobile accident that nearly cost me my life. My left arm was destroyed, and my left hand incapacitated with nerve damage.

      I passed most of 1998 in a haze, waiting to get better. I wondered what I would do with myself. I could not imagine what my life would be like without close-up, a pursuit I had dedicated my life to and had sacrificed so much for. I could not bear the thought that all the lessons that had taken me so long to learn—and cost me so much—would no longer be of benefit to me.

      In my pain-induced stupor, it occurred to me that they might be of benefit to someone else. It was in that spirit that I sat down to write this book, with a lot of one-handed-typing. It is my sincerest hope that I can help others reach their professional goals.

      I can promise only that what I have written, I know.

      You will not find lofty, untested theories in these pages. What you will find are practical, hard-won bits of knowledge, based on the years of experience of myself and others who have plied the trade with equal dedication and fervor.

      I have tried to write this book from a specific vantage point, imagining that I was writing for the fourteen-year-old me, who was just getting started and had no idea what lay ahead. I asked myself, What did I need to know but didn’t? What could have saved me precious time and energy? What was I unprepared for? What would have made my climb easier? I am pleased to report that writing the book that I needed at that time has given me enormous satisfaction at this time.

      I will reveal the hardest lesson first. It is surprising that it took me so long to learn it, given how important it is.

      To become a successful, professional close-up performer, you must consider yourself a businessperson first, an entertainer second, and a magician a distant third.

      Write that down. Repeat it to yourself over and over, for it contains the priorities that you need and the order in which you need them.

      Don’t worry. It’s not as boring as it sounds. This book is for people who want to be professional close-up artists. When I started out, that is what I desperately wished to become. Making a living with a pack of cards seemed to me like a goal that was . . . well, magical. I still think so.

      Whenever I got into my car, I thought, Wow! Card tricks helped pay for this. It was always a sublime thought. I was always proud to be a pro close-up artist, through good times and bad. When you do what you love for a living, there are never any truly bad times. Keep that in mind.

      So go forth! Armed with this book, a pack of cards, and some sponge bunnies, you will be as prepared for your journey as it is possible to be.

      I can assure you of one thing. You are in for one hell of a ride.

      P.S. If I get better and do this for a living again, forget everything you are about to read.

      INTRODUCTION:

      THE CLOSE-UP TRADITION

      Magic has been

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