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Richy Roy – Maxims of a Magician – review

Phil Sweeting — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 20:14:04 +0000

Maxims of a Magician is the second book by Richy Roy that we have reviewed here. You can read our review of The Wealthy Magician here.

The Wealthy Magician was a very applied book – looking at the business side of marketing and sales and value for a magician. Maxims of a Magician is a very different kind of book. As its name implies it is full of short ‘maxims’ followed by a brief (paragraph) unpackings of the same. There are 116 maxims in all.

It is a very difficult book to review because of its format and content. Some of the maxims seem to obvious that they hardly need stating (e.g. “Every Magician will have bad shows”!) – yet at the same time there is something liberating in having the truth of such statements ‘confirmed’ in print.

There are maxims and there are maxims…

For every ‘state the obvious’ maxim there are plenty more that are more thought-provoking or profound. For my money, some of the maxims about relating to other magicians are well worth taking on board, and some of the maxims about the life of a magician beyond the stage are also worth reflecting on.

There are some maxims which seem a little repetitious. And, if I am completely honest, there are some which seem a little vague. There is a Yoda-like form to some of the sayings which is not always clarified in the explanatory paragraphs – sometimes it feels like terms are not clearly enough defined. This may be a deliberate strategy to encourage the reader to reflect further on the matter themselves, but I found myself a little confused at times.

For me, one of the overriding values of the book is the way it gently encourages you to keep improving and growing and reflecting on what you are doing. So many new/inexperienced magicians are happy simply to trot out the same old stuff as everyone else, but I think Maxims of a Magician encourages you to reflect more deeply on what you are doing and why you are doing it. Regular readers will know that this is an aspect of our art that I value deeply and so I applaud the sub-text behind many of these maxims.

For a magic book lover, there is also a list of 56 recommended magic books at the back (of which I have a slightly disappointing 28!). There are some good suggestions here – though the order seems entirely random.

This is the sort of book that I think is well worth reading for a beginner or even a slightly more experienced magician – and probably worth coming back to every year or two. It is nicely produced as a small perfect-bound paperback running to 148 pages. At this size it feels just a little-overpriced to me.

You can pick up Maxims of a Magician for £21.99 from our friends at MagicShop.co.uk.

(Or just a notch cheaper at Amazon – if you don’t want to support a real bricks and mortar magic shop!)

I’m grateful to Richy Roy for providing a review copy of this book.

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Richy Roy – The Wealthy Magician – review

Phil Sweeting — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 18:11:11 +0000

I read a lot of magic books – but The Wealthy Magician is fairly unique within that genre. It is a book not about tricks (so I know lots of magicians won’t read it!) but about the business and commercial side of magic. As such, I have only read one or two things to compare, which makes it pretty well placed for a proper review.

Do you want to be a Wealthy Magician?

One of Roy’s main arguments is that a magician should be properly valued. So much of the first section of the book is a sustained plea to ask for higher fees, not lower, and to hold out for better quality gigs rather than being involved in a race for the bottom.

In fact, the first section is a little repetitive, and a significant amount of it could be summed up in the following two sentences. Richy Roy thinks a magician is worth $2000 (Canadian Dollars – for my UK audience – that is about £1100) for a gig. And if you want to earn that, you have to ask for it!

Much of that section is about self-belief – and actually asking for what you think you should be worth – rather than what you think they might be prepared to pay.

If you read any good books on business (negotiating, marketing, advertising etc.) then many of the concepts here will be familiar to you. What Roy so helpfully does is apply the principles specifically to the context of the performing magician.

Realistic and (mainly) up to date

It is filled with illustrations from his own experience which brings the book to life and eloquently make the points.

Part 1 – then – is about Price Tag. Part 2 is about Marketing and Part 3 is about Sales. Some of the ideas will need a little contextualisation for a UK audience – but most I would say are broadly applicable.

I found The Wealthy Magician easy to read and full of helpful advice. There are some brilliant ideas here for diversifying and for building your brand.

It is ‘up to date’ in the sense that it does have an awareness of Social Media and the impact that is having on advertising and marketing. However, perhaps inevitably with a book, it already feels slightly out of date in that regard. Since I would say that the dominance of Facebook is already reducing – no doubt there will be another big thing before long.

With this small caveat notwithstanding, I would suggest this is compulsory reading for anyone contemplating the move to being a full time professional magician. If that is one of your aspirations then this book would greatly help you take the right approach from a business point of view.

I would recommend reading it alongside a book which might help you think through the more performance related side of things – and my top recommendation there would be The Approach (you can read our review here).

You can pick up a copy of the Wealthy Magician from the Merchant of Magic for £38.50 (at the time of writing).

Or possibly ever so slightly cheaper at Amazon.

Review copy kindly provided by Murphys Magic to whom dealer enquiries should be directed.

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