How To Publish Profitable Magic Tricks

Before you read this, I recommend reading the first story of this series on publishing magic, titled ‘Andi Gladwin on Why You Should Publish Magic’. It's a great read with valuable insights from the Vanishing Inc. co-founder, who is commanding the future of the magic product industry

I have a secret checklist for spotting million-dollar magic products, and I’ve had quite a few successful magic producers say they’ve used this checklist or have similar lists of their own. David Penn had an interesting item he felt I was missing on my list — I won’t share it here. I did agree with him, and he does know a thing or two about hit products.

The industry is small, but it is possible to make a lot of money in magic.

What’s that? You’re an artist? You don’t care about money?

Well, you need to.

You see, the funny thing about niche industries is that if you follow the secret formula and get it right, you can hit big and make money for the rest of your life from just one great product. However, most magic releases are big fat flops that send people into debt.

I’m not just talking about the Mr Blonde drama we covered last year. I’m on about the everyday magician (usually young or new to magic) who put their life savings into manufacturing a product to send to Penguin or Murphy’s.

What these companies don’t tell you is that they’ll stock almost anything — especially if they’re selling it on consignment (the term magic companies use, which means they only pay you if someone buys your product from them). So, you need to tread carefully, don’t fall for too much encouragement and get your guiding principles sorted.

What Counts as A Good Product

When I was a teenager, Murphy’s Magic Supplies offered to fly me out to America to film a magic DVD with them. At the time (over ten years ago), I was politely informed that if the DVD sold any less than 3,000 copies, then the team would consider the project “not a success”.

Over the years, I’ve become friends with people at every level of the industry, and this number seems to ring true everywhere.

Why the sudden leap from 3,000 units to 15,000 units sold? Well, that’s how it tends to go. Reaching 5,000 units seems to be an inflexion point that, if passed, rockets you towards 15,000 units sold.

But that’s just sales, which you cannot always predict before you launch. I’ve seen great-looking products flop left, right and centre — so what are some of the defining characteristics of a profitable product?

Remember — we’re looking purely from a business perspective.

In my previous checklist, I mentioned how things like a trick’s name and the type of object used in the trick could help predict if it will be a hit product. However, those things don’t weigh too heavily on whether a product is good on a profitability level.

Maintenance is worth considering. The ideal, profitable product either doesn´t need much maintenance or is easy to maintain. A trick deck requires no maintenance; it’s an analogue product. Digital products often do require maintenance, but an app like those by Marc Kerstein can easily, over time, push out updates.

Consider maintenance for two reasons. Firstly, you’ll need to replace faulty or broken products, which will massively cut into your product's profit. Secondly, contact time is exhaustive — fixing things, emailing customers and mailing out replacements. Factor this into how you price your product or, even better, your decision to make a high-maintenance product in the first place.

Part 2. Consider Pricing Before Producing a Trick

So, let’s consider pricing.

Often, sitting down with a pen and paper to price a magic product is enough to convince you that the product is not worth producing.

Murphy’s Magic Supplies is the self-described largest wholesaler of magic. They supply magic shops worldwide. They’re often described as both the best and worst thing in magic. It makes sense — a monopoly business is not good for any industry. However, at the same time, Murphy’s is keeping the industry alive. Just about.

Murphy’s Magic can place large orders with small creators and publishers. On a daily basis, they distribute these products in batches, which can range as small as one product, to magic shops and dealers worldwide. Without this system, magic shops would be incredibly limited in the number of items they stock, and even then, the accounting and stock management would be horrific.

On the creator side — those large orders Murphy’s can place enable creators to take bigger risks and spend more money on products that are hard to produce in small quantities. Some magic products might have a minimum factory order of 1,000 units.

They also streamline shipping and client management. A creator would find it incredibly time-consuming to email and ship products to every magic shop, and shops would find it hard to email and receive products from every creator. Instead, everyone puts up with Murphy’s — often sending their products directly to them from the factory.

So, why is this important? Well, if you don’t start by selling to Murphy’s, then if you and your publisher are unable to flog all of your product direct to customers, you’ll end up at Murphy’s.

All roads lead back to Murphy’s, so you must price accordingly.

Murphy’s should pay all creators and publishers 40% of the retail price.

That would mean they’d buy a $100 magic trick at $40.

They don’t do that, though.

They’ll try to buy your trick from you for as low as 30% retail.

If they try to do this, stick up for yourself.

They’ll try to convince you by saying they’ll cover the cost of shipping, which is cute, as they usually cover the cost of everyone’s shipping.

Then they’ll say they’ll need to place a smaller quantity order if you will only sell to them at 40%.

Accept this and believe in your product.

If it’s good, it will sell, and they’ll order more.

Anyways, if you plan to sell your trick for $29.99 to customers, you really need to manufacture it for less than $3 per unit (it sounds low, but it’s true of a niche market). You’ll also need to do this in quantities as low as 100 units. This second part is difficult, but look closely at the types of tricks that creators successfully put out, like theory11, and Vanishing Inc, and you’ll see it might just be possible.

If your product costs more to produce, then it will need to go on sale at a higher price for magicians.

Why did I mention $29.99? Well, it’s the sweet spot for a magic product. A price below $29.99 doesn’t really impact the number of sales you get, but anything more and sales starts to impact. It turns out that magicians at scale are just as happy to spend $10 on a trick deck as they are to spend $15, $25, or even $29.99.

Oh — and if you’re thinking about ordering 1,000 units, even though Murphy’s only ordered 100 in their first order, simply because you’re confident they’ll order more. DO NOT DO THIS. You’ll end up with 850 copies of your magic trick stored in your mum's basement. Trust me — I’ve been around a while, and there are many ways this can blow up. I spoke to a creator the other day who had produced 3,000 units ready to sell before they found out an identical trick had already been released by another creator — what a nightmare.

Murphy’s will order 100-300 units (sometimes a lot more if they believe an item will be a hit) because they are proven business people who operate in a lending business. They are constantly running late in paying creators and chasing dealers for payment. Suppose you need to order more than what Murphy’s orders. Only if you absolutely need to —order 50% more. Even then, I would advise producing another product instead.

Most great magic tricks make for terrible magic products (yes, there’s a difference), which is why you see nothing but $1 gimmicks getting sold for $29.99.

It’s a niche industry, and great magic is hard to operate at that scale.

Part 3. Printed or Digital — That’s The Rule

This has become my mantra.

My golden rule.

My North Star.

Every product should be printed or digital.

I even apply this to my projects outside of magic. My Kickstarter card game is a printed product, and my voice journaling iOS app is a digital product. Inspired by the working magicians I met at The Session convention last weekend, I’m working on a new digital product for workers, too (email me about it).

All my recent projects are printed or digital, and that is all that matters.

Michael Weber is an annoyingly smart man —enough people have told him that, so don’t let him know I said it too. If you see him flogging his smart magic tricks at magic conventions, you’ll notice that all of them tend to be printed products or modified products that already existed outside of magic (more on this later).

Luke Oseland is doing quite a good job at this too. Incredible when you consider his young age. There he is every year in Blackpool, selling tricks to hundreds of buyers.

So why do printed or digital products suit the magic industry?

Well, it’s because printed or digital products suit all niche industries.

They’re low risk because their start-up cost tends to be low, and the fact that they infrequently break. (I should clarify that digital products are not tech products like special dice or notepads. Digital products are products like video tutorials, online masterclasses, and apps.)

Printed products are products that, once designed, are as simple as pressing control + p to print and send more to Murphy’s Magic Supplies. These products tend to be printed onto things that already exist in this universe, like business cards, playing cards, credit cards, stickers and more.

A great example of a printed product is the 52-to-1 deck from David Penn. Boy, that’s a profitable product. There’s no rough or smooth or fancy new gimmickry. The creator can print them and send them directly to Murphy’s from the factory. It’s a brilliantly profitable product. It sells out for $30 and I’ll let you guess how much it costs Penn to print a deck of cards.

But printed products do not need to be printed. I know — it’s confusing. Printed is ideal; by that, I mean that notion of control + p. A printed product is something that already exists that you are either repurposing, rebranding or reprinting.

So, you might take a sponge and cut it into a new shape. You might take a wallet and have it manufactured with a different fabric. Perhaps, you’ll order fridge magnets that look like chewed pieces of gum and simply print new packaging for them.

Printed and digital products are both easy to fulfil at any scale.

If you need 100 of them this month — easy.

If you need 3,000 — also easy.

This means the upfront cost and risk are low. There are limited development costs, and you don’t need to wade into a big minimum order at the top. Instead, you can test the waters with a smaller batch and then go from there.

Some printed products like books, cards, puzzles and stickers can actually be printed to order. If you buy my magic book on Gumroad, the copy you buy doesn’t exist yet but is actually printed to order and shipped directly to you from a printer near your home.

Now that’s the definition of a low-risk printed product.

I think this article does well to continue the series. We’ll get into the fun stuff like tutorials, marketing and trailers in the future.

First, start by deciding why you want to publish a magic trick, and then run the numbers to see if your idea is profitable.

Even if you’re an artist who doesn’t like or care about money — you don’t deserve to go into debt for this nonsense.