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Conjuring Arts today announced a new product offering. All of the magic books that Harry Lorayne wrote are now available for purchase in PDF format. Also, the entire run of Apocalypse as well.
Now the very elusive Personal Collection can be obtained for $50.
http://shop.conjuringarts.org/store/pc/v...egory=68

I have to say that I am surprised by this given Mr. Lorayne's long stand against going digital. I have wanted Star Quality forever and while I have nothing against e-books, somehow I DON'T want Star Quality as an e-book.
I suppose it was inevitable and obviously Mr. Lorayne has done nothing 'wrong.' I guess for me it is still a bit of a shock. I'll continue to wait for a hard copy of Star Quality.
Personal Collection is a GREAT GREAT book and was a bargain at 150 USD; now it's a veritable steal.

Just think Vlad, you won't have to cart those four volumes of Apocolypse around any more.

'If you ever write anything about me after I'm gone, I will come back and haunt you.'
– Karl Germain

Is the material in The Personal Collection pulled from Harry's other books or different?
These ebooks are priced very fair and along with L&L offers a great value for all of us.

'If you ever write anything about me after I'm gone, I will come back and haunt you.'
– Karl Germain

All different, motown. And you can order it directly from me. Go to my personal email address - first one listed under this post. best - Harry L.

[email]harrylorayne@earthlink.net[/email]
http://www.harrylorayne.com
http://www.harryloraynemagic.com

'If you ever write anything about me after I'm gone, I will come back and haunt you.'
– Karl Germain

It's a good thing in my opinion. I live in China where everyone is capitalising on other peoples works and I've seen copies of everything going around. I think Harry should be reaping on what he has sowed. Thanks again Harry!
S

For anyone who's picked up one of these new ebooks, do they have page menus? Which makes it easy to access different sections of the book.

'If you ever write anything about me after I'm gone, I will come back and haunt you.'
– Karl Germain

I know they've been OCR-ed and are searchable but do they have hyperlinked menus? Good question, motown!

Like Bonnie Raitt said, 'I miss Little Feat more than I miss being 8 years old.' Long live Lowell and Richie!

I find the apocalypse magazine scans very faded in places. Could they not have been made career and more consistent? Kind of difficult to read on my iPd mini

I purchased a digital copy of Close Up Card Magic, and I was a little dissapointed.
The material is all there, but the actual scanwork could have been done a lot better. When reading a sentence in some places the words don't always go in a straight line, and some are somewhat 'fuzzy'. Not horribly bad, but it is noticeable.
I have two main complaints about the 'e' conversion of this book.
The first? Bookmarks! Why aren't there any bookmarks? L&L Publishing also need to take a cue on this too. It is simply unacceptable to not have a table of contents bookmarked for ease of navigation. Forcing a reader to have to scroll through a book and stop at random spots to check what page they're at is a step backwards, technology-wise. It's not hard for a publisher to add them, so why not? I'd like to look at the contents, find the name of the effect I'm after, click on it, and then be instantly transported to it. Publishers should look at the Lybrary.com releases as a model to emulate in terms of quality and to see how to create a professional pdf properly.
My second complaint? Inconsistant page size! Every page is a different size than the page than the one that came before and the one that proceeds it! Unbelievable. Not only is it ugly, but it's a nuisance when viewing on a portable device. Again, another issue that the publishers could have easily fixed when doing the initial conversion.
I wanted to be excited about the Lorayne books being released digitally, but if this is the lazy kind of workmanship I can expect in all of the pdf's, then I'll pass. To be honest, I've even seen pirated copies of books done with better quality than this. I really hate to give a bad review here as I have been a lifelong fan of Harry Lorayne's work and own most of his books, but I am really dissapointed with the way his material is being presented here.
And Harry, if you're reading this, please don't take it personally.

I am very happy that some are noticing the work we are putting into our ebooks. It is very easy these days to scan a book, slap the images together into a PDF, run it through some OCR software, and call it an 'ebook'. But that is far from what we do at Lybrary.com. Most of our ebooks require many hours of manual editing, proof reading and formatting to create a decent ebook. We even release some of our ebooks in PDF and EPUB to give our customers more flexibility and a better reading experience on smaller screen devices.
I offered Harry Lorayne our help, but it seems his hands are tied contractually.

That is too bad. I would have been interested in some of these E-books . But if the image quality is that poor, What is the point.
A great oppertunity to get this quality material, ruined by sloppy work and less sales for Harry.Glenn

Excollector. Liquidating unused and slightly used items.

Well said Shayde, I agree. It kind of looks like someone took a pirated scanned version of the book and made it legitimate or something. Again, this has nothing to do with the content of the material. I bought Best of Friends 3, which I liked.
I also agree that publishers should have a look at lybrary.com and their quality of ebooks. I have bought several ebooks from them and I don't have any complaints. As Chris mentioned the contractual obligations, there is not much that can be done unfortunately.

I'm happy to give praise where it is due, Chris. Not only is the quality of your books superb, but your service is top notch too.

Sorry to hear that there is no searchable table of contents or bookmark capability as those are essential..

I wish more epublisher had the 'Lybrary.com quality seal'.
Anyway, carrying the Classic Collection volumes with me everywhere is fantastic !
Most of the tricks I do come from Mr Lorayne's repertoire, and I enjoy his style of writing a lot. Awesome news for me.
Cheers!
Sébastien.

I own lots of lybrary books. Only good things to say.
J

That's a bummer to hear that about these ebooks, great care should have been taken when putting these classics into digital form. Even though I have most of them in physical form, I would have considered purchasing some of these on sale if the quality of the PDF was up there. Cheers to the Lybrary.com Quality Seal.

95% of my stuff us from lybrary, quality and price is excellent and if there are any quality issues (out of Chris' control) you are warned up front. Good man Chris, keep up the good work