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I didnt say its a bad book. Its a great book IF you study it carefully....if you do. Not all people will find studying it interesting compared to some other methods and available resources. I read the royal road is adviced to look at first 99% of the time here. Same reccomendation to the guy who loves studying from books and a guy who has loved his couple of DVDs already (whats wrong with that?) and probably finds books boring. Same reccomendation. Interesting, huh? One can go back to royal road at any time in his magic career, there is no "you must start with this material in order to be good". Its just the persons interest and determination that matters! Thats especially hard to accomplish when you´re starting out, not losing interest. Royal road is an excelent book with great knowledge in it, but what if a person reads it barely half way through and then gives up just coz he was told by the magic guys that this is the only (its the only resource of card magic reccomended in this forum for starters) way to go, even though he mentioned how much he loved studying from a couple of DVDs (which aint that bad for a beginner), ignoring the fact that many of those who are just starting out, lose interest studying from a book coz they will get bored.A good DVD can be a little bit more fun. Not saying that reccomending the royal road, expert card technique, expert at the card table, card colleg etc. is bad advice (basically about 90% + of card magic can be learnt from these books), but its not the only advice available for a beginner who is in love with a couple of DVDs already and wants some more.

I'd suggest Royal Road and then working on that stuff for a couple months, Many of the effects in it aren't too sleight heavy and by the time you've spent a good deal of time with it, you could move onto things like Card College or Expert Card Technique.

If you want, you can get the R.Paul Wilson set. Though as he mentions in the DVD set, a lot of things were left out because a lot of the things in the book are good enough and more than likely they ran out of time to put EVERYTHING on there. With the effects not being totally sleight heavy they will/should allow you to focus on a decent presentation and also allow you to relax into performing for people. Hell, I think half of the book is just self working effects and might use one or two basic sleights.

I think books are better for getting the proper technique down correctly. The good books tend to go into a lot of detail about the exact finger positions and things like that, whereas DVDs are more like 'just hold it like this'. DVDs are better for some moves and give you an idea of what a move is supposed to look like, but in some ways books are far more detailed. Then again, if you find books boring, there's nothing wrong with learning from DVDs. But just because you find books boring doesn't mean everybody else does, and people aren't just recommending them to sound like magical purists either.

cc100

Royal Road might not be an amazingly upbeat read, it was written a while ago but after all it's trying to teach you the core techniques that you will need in the future for your card magic. Unfortunatly there is probably little that can be done to make this process more interesting as it is going to just be descriptions of finger grips, ect. If people pick up a book like this and then get bored before the end of the first chapter then obviously they wasn't that interested to begin with, most likely the type who just wanted to know how things were done rather than actually taking up the skill.

Dvd's can be good but personally I prefer books, they contain much more indepth descriptions for certain things, you get a larger range of good quality books compared to a lot of mass prodruced rubbish in the dvd area, plus they're normally cheaper. Another reason is that it's much easier to write a book than record a dvd, and appearing on film sometimes isn't what a magician wants so you will find some great magicians never recording a dvd or video but writing several books. I might be wrong here but I've never come across a Dai Vernon dvd.

To sum up, the books recommended here are done so for a reason, because many many magicians have taken the same route and would do so again. If people thought that the basic beginner material should be a dvd then every week when a new person signs up asking for starter help, they would have that recommened to them but that's just not the case. It's Royal Road every time. Again, I'm not against dvds, there can be good ones, but seriously, in the long run kaala when you've been dealing with magic for as long as some of us have, you will see that really, books are a brilliant source for magic.

I started with royal road to card magic. It is a great way to start. I also got a DVD which was ok. The roblem with dvd's is that they only teach small amounts due to the time constraints. RRTCM gives you a lot of material for a reasonable price. The DVD version is good but at the beginning it states it is not the whole book and that it recomends the book is used with it.

Some people struggle with books so they have to use DVD. If you need to use a DVD there are those recommended here, but look around and use the reviews and find one that you think suit you and your budget.
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As for Kaala it has been said previously that it was an ignorant remark. I have read and reread a lot of it and think it is a great source. I have read many non-fiction books that are much more boring.

I am going to say you should get The Royal Road to Card Magic AND the DVD set IF you can afford it. The Book is great and MANY top guys in the business got started by simply using the sleights in that book. The reason being is that all of the advancements on many of today's effects and sleights came directly from that book.

The DVD set is OK, it's not as great as I thought it would be, but R. Paul Wilson does perform some of the effects and the crowd he has seems like they are a bit bored of the stuff (which would make sense because he's most likely shown them a ton of Gambling demo's and other advanced effects over the years.).