How to Self-Publish a Magic Product
I have published 6 products through magic companies, I’m about to share with you what they don’t want you to know…
This is actually my first blog that is strictly magic-related, so thanks for lending me your time.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with releasing a magic product through a company. I’m incredibly grateful for the companies that have published my products. To be honest, there are so many advantages to publishing through a company; if people are interested, I’ll write about my experiences and the pros and cons of publishing with a company.
In this blog, I’m not going to dive into creative exercises on how to create a trick. This is solely about the business side of self-publishing a magic effect.
The Product:
Believe it or not, you need a strong, original idea.
Once you have the idea, you need to ask yourself:
Would people use this?
Does it solve a problem?
Can I manufacture this?
I’m going to focus on the manufacturing question. When you’re self-publishing a physical product, you need to knock up a whole bunch of them or outsource to a company that can do this.
Quite a lot of magic products use items that can be cheaply obtained from wholesale websites such as AliExpress.
Maybe it’s a card gaff that has to be hand-built. You could either build all of the gimmicks (bear in mind, you could sell between 10, and 10,000 of your product) or have a gimmick builder build them for you. Believe it or not, there are some magicians that will build gaffs for you, fit for the market (Davey Rokit springs to mind) at a fixed hourly rate or cost per unit.
Whenever I can outsource work, I normally do. I attempted making the sweet disposition gimmicks by hand myself, it took me so long to create the prototypes. Eventually, I found a prop builder that was able to hand build the gimmicks at an affordable rate. I’m so happy that I didn’t build 2000 replica sugar cubes.
If you feel your gimmick is complex to build but can be hand-built, it may be a viable option to put it out as a download. By putting out a download, you’ll cut your production costs right down, and the whole process will be extremely quick.
Choosing if you want to publish a download or a physical product is a big decision. They’re completely different ball games. I’ve made some decent dolla from downloads. You don’t need to produce any packaging, or fulfill anything (if you do it right, your download will be automated and become a form of passive income). It is a lot easier, but if you ever get round to selling at lectures or conventions, people don’t want to buy a slip of paper with a download code on it.
Producing the Product:
If you’re putting out a physical product, you’re going to need some lovely packaging. You can get really creative with your packaging (Jason Knowles and his wife Emma are the King and Queen of magic packaging).
A good, and affordable way to package a product that I see more and more magicians adopt is foil packaging. You can buy the mylar foil bags in bulk, and whack a sticker on the front.
Once you’ve got the product itself sorted, you’ll need to create a trailer and tutorial. I film all of the OseyFans Membership effects on my phone because iPhone cameras are amazing. I use Premiere Pro to edit, but you could use iMovie or similar free editing software.
If you wanted to make something great, it might be worth hiring a freelance videographer and a video editor. You should be able to find a decent videographer for under $200 per day, and you might be able to find a video editor to edit the trailer for <$100.
You could host the tutorial using a password-protected Vimeo (or, if you distribute through a wholesaler, you could ask the wholesaler to host the video).
I would recommend printing out the codes on a nice business card and tossing that into the product. You can get 100 biz cards for around $10.
If you’re creating a digital product, and don’t know where to start, I would suggest hosting it on your website or a platform such as Gumroad. You can then distribute the download through Penguin Magic or Murphy’s Magic if you feel you don’t have the audience.
Pricing the Product:
The age-old question:
Why is magic so expensive?
Magic products have some of the best profit markups. Effectively when you buy a magic trick, you’re paying for the idea, not the prop. This is how we can justify such high markups.
There is no other field of sales where you could sell a bit of fishing line and a safety pin on some elastic cord for $20.
I like to think that a product is worth whatever people will pay. Whenever I’m pricing a product, I’ll ask magician friends how much they would pay for it and would price it at the lower end of the results.
If you plan on stocking your effect through retailers or wholesalers, bear in mind you may only be getting as low as 35% of retail value for your product (which was the case with Sweet Disposition).
Feel free to shoot me an email and I can help you price your product x
Selling the Product:
Finally, your product is ready!
If you have a following of magicians, you can slap your product onto a website or Gumroad and watch the money come in.
It is definitely worth considering selling your product through Murphy’s Magic. Your product will be stocked at most magic shops, it’s a great feeling seeing your product in shops.
I’d also look into the Penguin Partner Program, you send them the product and they’ll fulfill the orders and pay you a royalty.
You can distribute downloads through Murphy’s and Penguin in the same way.
That’s all I really have to say on the topic. Please leave a comment if you have any questions, or enjoyed this post.