Even the pirated Necronomicon sells well

Last night, I was doing some research for one of my little projects---a Mythos Gang story---Bast and the Mittens of Destruction (this is a working title; it might be changed by the time I finish the story).

[For those who are curious, the Mythos Gang is a series of "adult children stories" that I started writing a couple of years ago before the "great depression of 2014---damn, those fucked up meds." I have never actually completed writing one yet. Besides I am writing them to amuse myself, so it does not matter if none of them ever get finished. Anyways...]

Last night, while searching "Necronomicon" on Amazon, I stumbled across this ebook listing.

Someone is selling a pirated copy of the Necronomicon.

Yes, that is right; someone is selling ebook copies of a scan of the Simon (Avon) Necronomicon. And when I say "scan," I mean "pretty lousy scan from an yellowed copy of this fraudulent grimoire."

See--it is just a bloody scan!

Now, this type of crap happens all the time. One of the arguments that pro-book-pirates make is that no one is making a profit from their piracy. Unfortunately, that is not universally true. And this is a perfect example of someone making a profit off a ripped copy of someone else's work.

Oh dear, someone is making money off of this. 

"How much profit?" you ask. Well, if we take the indie writer sales estimation formula (designed by indies for those snoopy indies who are curious about other people's sales)---one hundred thousand divided by the sales rank (100000/140538) equals daily sales (.71)....or 21 sales a month. Without knowing what percentage Amazon is giving them, and where their sales are coming from---let's just call that 21 dollars a month in royalities for a pirated book.

And this listing has been up since December 2013! So assuming sales have been constant from the beginning---this pirate has made four hundred dollars off of this pirated book.

I am not sure about anyone else, but I kinda feel like I am in the wrong profession. Why create new stuff when you can just rip off other people?

Actual customer reviews of the pirated version. 

And his? her? zisr? customers seem oblivious to the fact that it is a ripped copy. Now, I do not expect much from people who buy the Simon (Avon) Necronomicon---which may have been created as a practical joke---but really? I particularly like the one that says, "Excellent book. Presents actual text that John [Dee] worked with so draws the reader directly into the essence of ancient wisdom & magic."

(In all fairness, all occultists, witches, and magicians are assumed to have a copy of this book. I own a copy myself---a copy that I brought at an used book store.)

There seems to be no ebook edition of the Necronomicon.

Now, I firmly suspect that the reason that people are buying this badly scanned ebook is simply because there seems to be no official ebook edition of the Simon (Avon) Necromonicon. I do wonder why that is....though given that the book has never been out of print since its initial publication and seems to sell well, I am sure that the publisher sees absolutely no reason to issue an ebook copy.

Fuck! This is a damn good sales rank for a "fake" book.

Just how well does it sell? Well, if the wonky formula is to be believed; it sells five copies a day. That is a whooping 1825 copies a year. And even if the formula is giving us the wrong number, consider the fact that this book is number nine in the category of occultism---I know that there are some occult writers who would consider murdering someone to get that rank in the occultism category. In my case, I would consider murdering the pirate selling the bad scan for profit; my defense would be that piracy is a victimless crime. (What?! Am I stretching that defense out more than the people who argue that in book piracy justifications? I think not.)

Anyways, so this has been a rant; therefore, it must be Wednesday in Mad Uncle Morgan's world. Have a good evening.

Card of the Second Harvest (Tarot Blog Hop)

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Hi everyone! I am Mad Uncle Morgan. And welcome to another edition of the Tarot Blog Hop.

My regular readers will note that this is the second blog hop that I have done this month; the first one being the Tarot Jam blog hop. For those doing the hop, there is a chance that you just came from the Denver Tarot Convention blog, which is actually a guest post that I did about a Tarot field trip during the June 2015 convention (I was assigned the task of taking a photo for the Tower card).

As always if there are breaks in the hop chain, you can always go to the Master List to correct your course.

The idea for this hop comes from our wrangler's experience of creating a Maninni Tarot deck ("maninni" is Italian for "many little hands"). Instead of trying to create a whole maninni deck, we are focusing on what Tarot card is best suited to represent Mabon, the second harvest and the Autumnal Equinox.

Now, for those people in Golden Dawn, or who study its Tarot system (Book T), there is no question which cards are assigned to Mabon....or is there? If we were only looking at the Wiccan holidays from a Northern Hemisphere position, we would have clear cut answers. The problem is that the Southern Hemisphere is (sort-of) dealing with Ostara as we have Mabon in the Northern Hemisphere. (I say "sort of" because my understanding of the seasons is that they are not the polar opposite of ours; seasons are unique to their location. For instance, Egypt has three seasons, not four that Europe and America has. Therefore, the Wiccan Sabbats as created inside Traditional British Wicca are not a good fit for much of the globe.)

Golden Dawn Tarot system applied to the Wiccan Sabbats

I first became aware of this problem when I started to design the Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Sabbats (now available on Amazon). Initially, I considered using the Tarot as the basis of the magical images for the Sabbats. (A magical image is an image that is used to connect with the energies of a divine or astrological force, for the purposes of divination, mediation, and magic.) I also considered using the traditional images of the zodiac degrees that the Sabbats fell upon.

It was the Southern Hemisphere problem that convinced me that this was the wrong solution to use. (When I was involved in the Sanctuary of Maat, several of the students that I was proctoring were living in Australia and New Zealand--thanks to them, I became acutely aware of the fact that the Southern Hemisphere and its seasons complicated things that were considered cut and dried in the Northern Hemisphere. Today, though the Sanctuary of Mau, I still deal with Golden Dawn students in the Southern Hemisphere---therefore, I tilt at the Southern Hemisphere problem still on occasion.)

My solution to the problem was to treat the Wiccan Wheel of the Year and its eight Sabbats as symbols of a mystery tradition, and not as solid fixed points in time. Basically, I came to the conclusion that the Wiccan Wheel of the Year was an artifical creation, and part of a modern myth cycle designed for modern pagans. Once that decision was made, I could divorce the holidays from the zodiac wheel. This also meant that the Tarot was unsuited to the new system that I was creating.

In my script of the Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Sabbats, I described the magical image of Mabon as "A man wrapped in ivy and grape vines standing in front of a standing stone. He holds a horn stuffed with grapes and corn, and he makes the sign of silence." Since that initial version, I have made a couple of chances in the magical image for Mabon.

Mabon as a Tarot card/ magical image

I have modified the image so that the figure is no longer using the sign of silence. The figure is now standing in a vat (barrel) full of fruit and grains. The horn that the figure is holding now also includes grain.

My use of the magical image is representative of issues where one is in the middle of an income cycle. One has already recieved profits and income is at the half-way mark, but one still have some profits and income that has not been recieved yet. It is also representative of taking resources and converting them into something else, like turning grains and fruits into alcohol; or taking raw clay and chemicals to produce pottery.

If I was to replace an existing Tarot card with this image, I probably would put it in the place of the Three of Cups. Or maybe the King of Cups. But I am most likely to use this image, and the other seven Sabbat images, as part of a "side deck"---cards that can replace or be added to another deck. Or maybe as part of an oracle deck. Honestly, I am not sure yet. And we are in the days of print-on-demand Tarot and Oracle decks--there is nothing saying that we are stuck using the only traditional seventy-eight cards.

So that is where my current development of this particular image is at. Thanks for reading, and please consider reading some of the other posts in this edition of the Tarot Blog Hop.

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How to be a self-published occult writer (a list of ideas to ignore)

So you want to be an occult writer? Because everyone who is involved in the occult wants to be a writer. Well, maybe not everybody--I understand that there is an occultist in Denmark that does not want to be an occult writer....but I think that person might be a myth. So how does one become a self-published occult writer? (Because it is a lot of work to get a publisher interested in your work---after all, the average occult book sales numbers are only in the low hundreds, even for a bestseller. There are also economic reasons to be self-published...but that is a whole another post to be written.)


Step one: Actually be an occultist.


This might seem funny to put the horse in front of the cart, but it is really helpful to actually be an occultist when writing about the occult. And I do not mean being a fly-by-night just-got-involved occultist (who knows all about the occult despite never actually opening up a book and/or never doing a single spell or ritual) or an armchair occultist (all theory--years and years of theory, but not a single working operation ever). I mean an actual occultist, someone with years of practical experience under their belt who can wing-it on pretty much on every possible ritual type without having to consult the internet or beg for spells (I would include books here, except that no one actually reads books any more....which should give you pause).


Step two: Establish a presence.


The sad part about being a writer who wants to sell books is that your marketing has to begin years before you publish your masterpiece. Yes, I know that you are special and unique. But you could be a living god and you will not sell copies of your book if no one knows who you are. You want to have your Facebook, your Twitter, and whatever other useless social media presence that you want to have established before you hit "publish."


Remember that as a self-published occult writer, you do not have a publisher to pimp out your work. Not that a publisher will do that much advertising for you--for some reason, publishers tend to do a small shout-out when a book is published, and then they generally ignore it...unless it becomes a hot seller, in which case, they were always fully supporting your work.


You are going to waste a lot of time on social media. And not just on marketing---people tune out the salespeople on social media, so you better be prepared to trot out those funny cat pictures. You want people to be following you, and generally well-disposed to you, so that when you pop out that occasional "please buy my book!," they do not immediately ignore you.

While you are wasting gobs of time, keep an eye out for successful occult writers. Notice their work habits, their general level of helpfulness, how they conduct themselves. Keep track of which ones are actually supporting themselves doing something non-occult related.

Step three: Research and experiment.

This ties back into step one, and cannot be stressed enough--working occultists have an edge. Part of your presence should be you pretending to care about others and trying to be helpful. One should not smile at the stupid numpties who are packed up to the rafters while suggesting helpful ways for them to ensure that they are visited by instant karma. Remember living customers potentially are repeat customers, and you want to test your stuff to ensure that no one loses a limb while performing your awesome rituals of power and magic.


Step four: Try to be original.

And fail miserably. Everything has been done before. The only thing that you really have to offer without robbing a cache of unpublished material from famous dead occultists is your unique voice. If your writing sounds like everyone else's, you are not being unique. A reader should be able to spot a piece of your writing without seeing your byline. Unfortunately, developing an unique voice requires lots of writing, way more than you thought it would take.


Step five: Wrestle with the keyboard.

Let's be honest---there are a ton of "occult writers" who do not write. Oh, occasionally one will be working on a book or an article, but most writers are just giving themselves a fancy title to reap the glories and fame that they think comes with the profession of being a writer. Of course, if that is you, then you are already long gone, having abandoned this post four steps ago---or perhaps at the very title of the post.

The harsh truth of the writing profession is that writers write. We write a ton of bad copy, a ton of bad ideas flow off of our fingers and into inky pixels, horrifying us when we make the mistake of reading our first drafts.


Ask yourself this: Can I survive the horrors of National Novel Writing Month? (For the unenlightened, the idea behind NaNoWriMo is to hack out, and I do mean HACK, fifty thousand words in the space of thirty days. While the focus of NaNoWriMo is on bad first drafts of novels [fifty thousand words being the lowest word count to qualify a work as a novel...according to some literary standard board which name I am too lazy to look up], the idea is the same. Can you crank out copy?

If the answer is No, you might still be able to be a writer. There are occult writers who have milked the fame of a single occult book--I know one whose work was simply photocopying the same set of rituals over and over again, and the fifty pages that were not the same ritual over and over again were also cribbed from someone else...and there are people who think that he is the greater occult writer and authority of our time (I kid you not).


But, and it is a mighty big BUT, most writers who are truly successful write a lot of copy. In order to be truly successful, you have to write a lot of words to feed the beast. Fifty thousand words a month is actually below what most professional writers (aka those who are paying their mortgage payment with their writing income) write per month. Professional writers write, just like professional plumbers plumb. 

Step six: Edit the crap out of that manuscript.


One of the harsh realities of being self-published is that you are responsible for the whole nine yards. This includes the editing of your book. Speaking as a nasty harsh book reviewer, I take away points for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. The more unreadable your work is, the more points I deduct---with a really badly edited and formatted book, it can cost the book five out of five stars.


So do yourself a favor and edit the crap out of your manuscript. Make it as easy and clear to read as you possibly can. You do not want your readers' eyes to bleed from merely reading the horrific way that you string words together. Save the eye bleeding for your revolutionary magical ideas.


Please note---you do not have to do your own editing. It is helpful if you can do your own editing, but know that a second (and a third and a fourth, etc. etc.) set of eyes is really helpful. Yes, it is going to cost to use an outside editor; but where there is a will, there is a way. Remember step two? Look how the successful writers are accomplishing this--some are paying for a service (who are they using? how much do they charge?) while others are using some form of beta-readers, or exchanging editing (because it is easier to see other people's mistakes). Also remember that the less painful it is for an outside editor to edit your work, the better (for instance, I charge extra for editing if it makes my eyes bleed).

Step seven: Putting it all together.


Also known as the joys of formatting. As I mentioned in the previous step, I deduct points when I review a badly formatted book. Again this is something that you can choose to do yourself, or farm out to someone else. I personally choose to format my own work, but I have also set up a front and back matter document to save me time during the formatting process. To the best of my knowledge, all the self-publishing platforms have a page (or a complete pdf) of formatting tips. Consider formatting as you write.


Step eight: Set up your accounts.

There are several companies that you can self-publish though. Or you can choose to self-publish though your own web page (this is not a good route if you have not built up an audience back in step two). The goal is to make your work available though as many sales platforms as you can. The nice thing about the current self-published world is that thanks to ebooks and POD (print-on-demand), you do not have to pay for a ton of books that you end up having to store and ship out of your basement.


The big daddy of all sales platforms is Amazon, of course--who else could it be?! I would avoid the exclusive option. For paper books, there is the Amazon-associated CreateSpace.

If you want to have a hardback book, there is only Lulu. I must admit that Lulu is on my low end of concern when it comes to uploading. For one, Lulu takes a bigger cut, and forces you to have higher prices (this is true even if you are not doing the paper route). Second, my experience is that Lulu just does not get random book paying traffic--in other words, for every copy you sell, you have to work hard to advertise.

There is Kobo, and Barnes &Noble, and quite a few other platforms...some of which I have never figured out how to set up an author account with. And each platform I have mentioned requires you to have a separate account, and upload an uniquely formatted document to (by unique, I mean that the various platforms have different requirements, including your adcopy refers only to their company...with one expectation).

 My preferred "I am a lazy writer who can't be bothered to upload to a dozen platforms" outlet as a self-publisher is Smashwords. The advantage of using Smashwords is that I get to use the same adcopy, a single document, and do not have to upload separately to Kobo and Barnes & Noble, and to other outlets that I see little, if any, sales from. Smashwords also distributes to a couple of outlets that I have never been able to create an author account for, or who absolutely refuse to deal with individuals authors (for instance, the library services). The disadvantage is that you have to give Smashwords, as well as the outlet that they distributed to, their percentage of the loot. But in my case, I would rather do that than spend a lot of time uploading to multiple platforms. The one platform that Smashwords does not support is Amazon (there is a long story there--bottom line Amazon wants the opportunity to trick you into exclusivity on their platform).

So for those who are curious, my priority to upload and distribute goes Amazon, then Smashwords, and Lulu on that cold day when I have nothing better to do.

At the very bottom of my list is a company called BookBaby. It is on the very bottom of my list, for the simple fact that it involves an upfront cost. Maybe you can afford it, and maybe you will sell enough copies to make a profit; but for myself, it just guarantees that I never will make my break-even point.


Step nine: Obtain a decent professional cover.

I suggest that you use frolicking unicorns with lots of rainbows. Or a black robed magician performing a human sacrifice. And hand-draw it even if you are not an artist. It will save you money...


...unfortunately, it will cost you lots of sales. Potential readers really do judge books based on their covers. When it comes to covers, unfortunately one needs to brace for the fact that you are going to have to pay for a professional cover. Fortunately, in step two, you might have learned of an artist or photography service that charges reasonable rates.


Step ten: Write adcopy.

Your adcopy, just like your book cover, is the first impression that a potential reader has of your book. Edit the crap out of it. And do not write it on the day that you are uploading (do as I say, not as I do). Remember that you need to know what category your book is in (research where other writers have placed their books--ex. Wicca is not the same as Satanism), and that you can use seven (Amazon) to ten tag words (Smashwords).


Step eleven: Upload files.

I mention my priority of who to upload to in step eight. A bit of advice that I give out from painful experience is: Block out a day to upload to a platform that you have never uploaded to before. You get better at uploading with experience, but the first time will be more painful than you think it will be.


Step twelve: Advertise and network.

This is where you abuse the presence that you set up in step two. Generally, devote as much time as you care to waste on it. I have discovered that a couple of dedicated Facebook pages and my FB wall, using a single ad, is more effective than most of the Facebook sales and promotion pages and groups are. A devoted audience is better than a random group of writers who are busy trying to sell you their own work. Throwing money at this problem comes only after you have shelled out for editing and a decent cover--no amount of money will move a fugly bad book without a dedicated audience. (Please note that bad books can sell if you have been a complete whore in step two. My proof? Fifty Shades of Grey.)

Step thirteen: Sell a single copy of your book.

And this is what it is all about. Selling a single copy of your book to someone who is not a close personal friend, lover, or close relative. Ideally, you want the joy of selling a copy to someone that you have never met or interacted with. And note that some writers never accomplish this step.

Step fourteen: Claim to be a famous best selling occult author.


We both know that it is a lie; but if you don't poke fun at me when I do it, I will try to return the favor. After all, we have both seen each other's Amazon sales rank (with some basic math, I can figure out your daily sales); therefore, we both know that we wasted a whole bunch of time that would have been better spent writing erotica or flipping burgers. But what us writers know, our adoring fans do not need to know.

And the internet boils over (Flaming Book Review edition)

Satan Kitty is annoyed that we must talk about things other than him.

I was not going to blog about this...but the members of the HOGD/AO want an answer, so here I am blogging about the internet boiling over.

(For those who do not know about today's meltdown, David Griffin has allegedly ordered his members to quit buying Nick Farrell's books, and to give Farrell's books extreme negative reviews on Amazon; and Farrell has allegedly bad-mouthed the only people who have ever called themselves Alpha and Omega.)

The question that is forcing me to address today's meltdown is: Why did I not address Nick Farrell alleged bad-mouthing Griffin's HOGD/AO Order in my antacid review?

Now, this question should have came up before this point. But the only comment I got about the review before today was a remark from one of my friends that I could not spell (antiacid, antacid--what's the difference?!). I might have gotten a comment or two on Facebook, but I do not remember them...because they did not question why I said the things that I said about King Over the Water: Samuel Mathers and the Golden Dawn in my review of the book.

In fact, I was expecting the internet to boil over the first week of March...it didn't. It made me suspect that the only people reading my review were crickets. It made me suspect that the only people to read Farrell's book were the reviewers.

Now, my unpleasant answer to the question---I did address it. Maybe, just maybe, I was too subtle about it.

Here is where I addressed the alleged bad-mouthing of the current AO.

The biggest problem with this book quite honestly is that those people who need to read it the most will ignore it because their superiors will tell them that it is just a pack of lies and a political ax job meant to destroy Mathers and their superiors' reputations. And they will believe their superiors. Farrell tries to address this issue by pointing out some of the things that dishonest Orders have done in the past. I would love to say that the offenses he lists are isolated events, but they remind me of the laundry list of crap that I have seen in the various esoteric groups that I have been involved in.

Wow. It looks like I am really good at predicting the future...I am not.

Get your Golden Dawn brand antacids here! Just $9.99 a bottle.

It is now time to take an antacid and step into the Way-Back Machine---mind the flaming dog poop.
The year is 1989. And I am trying to locate anyone working the Golden Dawn system of magic here in Denver Colorado. There are three lodges operating here. (Actually four, but I am unaware of the fourth lodge at this point.) All three lodges claim to be Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. And one is really loud about the fact that they are descended from the original Alpha and Omega.

It turns out that the loud-mouth is the worst behaved of the lot. I am fortunate that the leader (the sole person who really has power in the group) takes one look at me and decides that I am too poor to be worth his time. Yes, too poor. Years later, I had the opportunity to talk to some former members of the group in question after the group exploded into flames, and they had horror stories worse than mine. (For the record, I have been in a lot of bad groups and had lots of horror stories already about bad leaders.)

I also got to see their rituals, thanks to the fact that for some reason I was declared someone responsible. (How that happened I still don't know.) And honestly, the rituals looked like they came out of Regardie's book. It is safe to presume that the loud-mouth lodge had no actual lineage to the original GD/AO.

Interestingly enourgh, the lodge that might have had the best lineage, and which rituals actually looked like the AOs, chose to bury the fact that they ever had a lineage...occasionally, one would hear a horror story about the group that they sprung from. (Technically, they were a schism group...and we all know that schism are never correct in leaving their Mother Order.)

So here we have a bunch of AO problems of the type that Farrell is referring to and Griffin is not even in the community yet (or at least not as a visible member from where I was standing). This misbehavior was well BEFORE Griffin took out the trademark for the HOGD/AO name.

Therefore, I was not completely convinced that Farrell was talking the current AO. Honestly, if you wait long enourgh, the players will change, but the misbehavior will still be the same. In my experience, the worst leaders mimic Mathers and claim descent from him and his branch of the tradition. There was a thrity year period that a whole bunch of misbehavior was carried out under the banner of being from Mathers' spiritual lineage. And Farrell could have been talking about any of them...he did not mention Griffin's modern AO by name.

(One hopes that Griffin is different...but seriously, threats of lawyers, bad book reviews, and piracy?! One should not have to resort to such threats---one's actions and service to their community should be the only proof one needs.)

And honestly, someday Griffin is going to die and a whole bunch of Orders are going to spring up claiming to descend from his AO, and I am betting that some of them are going to be bad apples. Because of that, I would rather see the warning than ignore the past crimes of groups that spent thirty years claiming descent from Mathers before Griffin even showed up on the scene. Because the warning was needed thirty years ago, twenty years ago, and someday will again be needed.

So there is your answer: I am not completely sure that Farrell was talking about Griffin's Order because there were others claiming descent from the AO long before him, and they were bad evil leaders, and someday others (after Griffin is dead and buried) will claim descent from the AO to justify their misbehavior. Better a warning misread today than none at all.

Are your book reviewers clones?

Given the few books that come out in my chosen field, I tend to check out the new ones as soon as they become available...or at least, I check out their sales page immediately; even through at the moment, I have no money to buy books. Nevertheless, I do find some interesting reading.

Like tonight, I checked out the Amazon page for a book that just came out---no name mentioned---and noticed that it had already gotten four five-star reviews. Actually, there was only four reviews all together. And they were glowing reviews. And all dated December 6th. Get the picture?

Now, as a scholar and a writer, I found myself curious about what other books these people were buying. After all, maybe I can sell them something. Upon looking at the other reviews that they have done, I rapidly realized that I will not be selling these readers any books. I had gotten the picture.

Each of them had brought a baby clothing item, a baseball book, and this new occult book. By the way, the baseball book is the exact same book. And these are the only three reviews that these four people have done. Get the picture?

So this book is selling to a very specific audience, one who has a new baby, only read baseball books written by a fan of the Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, and who thinks this new occult book is the bees' knees. Get the picture?

I get the picture. If the writer who wrote the book is reading this, I would like to inform you that your audience consists of clones. I am not sure how big that audience is...but good for you for cornering that market. As for your book, not being a clone and having a long list of books that I cannot afford to buy already...well, I think I will take a pass on this one. After all, I am not a cloned baseball loving sheep baby-making machine. I hope that you get the picture.

(And if one of my readers have spotted the book that I am talking about and would like to propose a different theory, please feel free to leave it in the comment section. Please remember that I suspect that this writer will be googling themselves to see what type of press they are getting---bear that in mind before naming the author or the book. I am not sure that we want to give buzz to a book that only clones are reading.)

Weighing Amazon book reviews

One of the things about the modern world is that anyone can express their opinion of a book, movie, TV show, music album, etc., and everyone with an internet connection can read it.

(The rule I am about to suggest applies to my reviews also. I just happen to post my book reviews some place other than Amazon. I think that my book reviews are slightly less biased...but that is probably just my ego talking. Plus, I openly admit my identity and material connections, as per government regulations.)

For instance, you can go to Amazon, punch in the name of a book, and read reviews that people posted on the product page.

Unfortunately, you do not know how many reviews on Amazon are written by the author, their spouse, their friends, and their furry children hiding behind random customer names. Another unknown is the number of reviews which are posted by enemies and stalkers of the author.

So how do you figure out what reviews to listen to, and which ones to ignore?

Well, here is how I do it. I look at the other reviews that the reviewer has posted.

If you are a regular buyer of certain types and genres of books, odds are that you will have read some of the other books that the reviewer has reviewed. Remembering the books that you have read, do these reviews match the books?

Here is the kicker. Often someone who hates all your favorite books, movies, TV shows, etc., is actually an useful reviewer. My mom used to watch this one movie critic because she knew that if he hated a movie, she would actually enjoy it. I also have a few reviewers that I watch; I know that if some book makes them foam at the mouth, then I should really get it because their enjoyment meter is the polar opposite of mine.

So if you hate my reviews, keep reading them...I am a good gauge of what you like once you remember that I am on the opposite side of good taste.

And if you love my reviews, bless your little heart.

Shopping for expensive books

Earlier today, I saw a posting on the public HOGD/A&O yahoo group that was basically an Ebay advertisement as well as providing bragging rights for David Griffin. It was about someone offering their copy of the Ritual Magic Manual up on Ebay; starting price a mere ninety-nine dollars (the curent bid is now $100). The seller mentioned that he thinks this is low compared to what others are listing it for.

And yes, I had to go look. Not that I am in the market for a copy...I own a copy already. My copy sits between a reprint of the first volume of the Equinox and a copy of the Blue Equinox; I am not sure how it ended up being placed on the shelf that way, but I do find that the placement appeals to my sense of humor.

Anyway, so I am looking at the other listings of this on Ebay. There are two (both by a different seller; I wonder how many copies they have): one starting at $600, and one at the "buy it now" price of $800.

The price of the book is only slightly cheaper on Amazon: the lowest are starting at $350 and move up into the $400s. And there are a couple copies that have a thousand dollar price tag.

Now everyone who has read my book review of the Ritual Magic Manual knows that I think that the book is perhaps worth the fifty dollars I paid for it, but it is sure not worth no thousand dollars. Even the hundred dollar mark is pushing the envelope in my opinion.

So what I am curious about is: Who is actually paying this amount for this book?

My current theory is that it is not actually occult students buying this book at these inflated rates...I could be wrong; we do get some fools ripe for fleecing by those who are willing to indulge in cult-like behavior. But I feel that it is more likely that it is investors that hope to unload the book on someone else down the line for even more outrageous rates.

(There is a third possibilty...but no one would actually do that would they? Only I am that evil, right?)

Nevertheless, I must admit that I admire this whole business. It is hard to convince people to pay more than ten dollars for an ordinary book, and here we have an out-of-print book going for hundreds of dollars. It reminds me of the stock market...but that may just be my black heart; remember---I do not think it is real occult students paying this book.

So if you are in the market for a copy of the Ritual Magic Manual, hop over to Ebay and check out the listing; you may actually get it cheaper than the Amazon price. I am going to be watching the auction all the while wondering who is actually profiting from this book. Heaven knows that author did not get that much loot from the original sale of the book.

Full disclosure: I am the elected officer of a Golden Dawn based lodge in Denver, Colorado. The opinions expressed do not represent the opinions of my fellow lodge members or the Secret Chiefs (aka the cats). Complaints can be filed with the Secret Chiefs; bribes of tuna will help to gain their prompt attention.

Angry email and comments will be read, but not necessarily approved or commented on. This includes poison ink letters from the author himself. The book review represents my opinion which I am allowed to have as a member of the media; I am not going to rewrite my book reviews just because they upset authors (and it is a long line of authors that hate my book reviews).

Followup---18 October 2009: The book got seven bids and sold for one hundred and fifty dollars, a far sight away from the prices that some are asking for. Maybe it is just the recession...