Las Vegas magician Jason Bird discusses "Strolling for Dollars," his 580-page field guide to making a living doing walkaround magic, with a foreword by Jeff McBride. From a childhood library book to the Vegas Strip, Jason traces his path through Caesar's Magical Empire, the influence of Eugene Burger, and why he chose print over a video course. He talks candidly about pricing, the twelve working magicians he interviewed, and the philosophy at the book's heart: good magic leads to more magic.

Joan DuKore, Collin Foster, Greg Gleason, Chris Hanna, Brian Irwin, Derek Ostovani, David Penn, Caroline Ravn, Shimshi, and Rob Weinstock. How did you choose those particular 12, and how did you go about gathering material rich enough to merit a chapter each rather than, you know, a quick quote?

And I kind of wanted to get their name out there, and they. It blew me away. Not a single person I asked if they would contribute to my book said no. They were all very, very gracious about it. And some people I knew, I follow Caroline Ravn. We've never met in person, but we've talked before. A few times. So I asked her to do it.

David Penn and I are friends, but not close friends or anything, but I just kind of took a flier, "Hey, would you be willing to do this?" And literally every single person that I asked just agreed to it. And it blew me away just how willing they were to help me out with a little project and give their wisdom. Because magicians are pretty secretive. So there was even some parts during the interviews I was like, "Wow, I can't believe you actually just said that. I can't believe you gave away that little secret." So it's a great way to learn literally from the best. Almost like reading their personal diaries of the best advice that you're not going to read it anywhere else because they're pretty tight-lipped about stuff like that.

She certainly is. Well, as you know, there is a deep canon on technique, on history, on theory, and on presentation, but the number of books about the business of magic by comparison is small.

I'm like, giggling a little bit. The fact that he said that about my book, like, it means that much to me. And he was the first one that really gave it, I think, some legitimacy. So when people started reading it and they were like, "Oh, if Ken Weber says this is a good book, maybe we should take a look at this." And so, yeah, that's that story. Just happened to meet him. And it's not like he goes around with a name tag that says 'Ken Weber.' Like, if I hadn't just overheard him introduce himself to Joseph Gabriel, I would have never known that was him ever.

So they're flying me to do one of the top -- I looked them up, they've argued in front of the Supreme Court. They're like one of the top law firms in the country. But plus expenses, $3,500 for two hours of walkaround magic. So that's a pretty good night, you know, so that's what's possible and that's what you can shoot for. I just did a show for Capriotti's. It's like a big sandwich shop in Las Vegas and they have lots of stores. So it was a show for all their franchisees.