Today’s News: Ammar and BarryInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

British Television Journal Announces Next David Blaine. A UK television channel hopes to spice up its fall schedule by including a cancelled Showtime feature, The L Word, about lesbianism and, more importantly for us magicians, ‘Close Encounters with Keith Barry,’ showcasing the talents of street-magician Barry, tipped to be the next David Blaine.

Read On . . .

Certainly Mr. Barry?s skills are well deserving of a series and the praise offered. The young Irish magician has been performing magic since he was just 14 and worked his way through college by performing our favorite art in clubs and restaurants. Mr. Barry received an honors chemistry degree in Galway Ireland and was the resident performer at U2’s Kitchen Nightclub VIP lounge.

If you haven?t already done so, check out Mr. Barry?s incredible website. It is the perfect admixture of style and substance resulting in a truly professional place on the web to invite and educate clients.

You can see his website by clicking here. We?ll put his site in the Inside Magic Links of Fame (Premium Edition) not because he is Irish and a magician or because he?s got great style and super future but because . . . no, wait, actually those are the reasons.

If you have a site you think is worthy of inclusion in what has recently been named ?The Place to Have Your Magic Link on the Web,? click the Inside Magic Links of Fame panel on the left and give it your best shot.

Read On . . .

Michael Ammar is back from one tour and getting ready for another but has time to add to my library in an instant. He has digitized Encore 3 and put it on his website for instant download. As readers of Inside Magic know, I can?t stand to wait for anything ? nothing. I couldn?t even tolerate how long it just took me to write that last sentence.

The idea of getting an incredible 74 page book in just 42 seconds from first click on the Michael Ammar website to reading the description of first trick is just perfect. I understand that Encore 3 has been out of print for almost 15 years. It looks fantastic. I?ll likely be up all night reading it and try to get you a review in the morning or Tuesday morning so check back.

I think it is great that Mr. Ammar is putting out his great works by download digital files. He vows to put up about one a week.

If I could make a humble suggestion to Mr. Ammar, sell a subscription for a month?s worth of downloads or perhaps even six months? worth. One of the most notable qualities of Mr. Ammar?s work is that it is multi-part or separated into volumes. If you?re like me, you probably have his tapes neatly arranged on your bookshelf with the numbers correctly assembled. Why not do the same thing with the downloads.

Put up a volume at a time over the course of a month or two months and sell a subscription to the entire set. Anyway, that?s my suggestion. I can tell you that the download process works flawlessly and that the quality of the PDF is outstanding. Mr. Ammar provided the text and Richard Kaufman created incredible drawings and diagrams. By the way, I like this product.

Check out Mr. Ammar?s site here. Download his Encore 3 here.