Start with the free ebook from Dominic Reyes

I know it's been mentioned before but I have to say Magic and Showmanship by Henning Nelms.
A lot of these books are available on the ebook service Scribd, I've found paying my membership for that has given me access to so much more material so it might be worth looking into.

Get carney's book "carneycopia" and study the coin trick "the cylinder and coins" (starting on page 50, I think).
The write-up really helps.

You should train yourself to always use misdirection. Always, always, always.

From what I can tell, the new breed of magicians mistakenly think that speed and nifty-looking sleights are all that is needed and this is not the case at all. They flash. They look cool while they flash, but they flash all the same.

For a really nice demonstration of misdirection, look at Tommy Wonder's cups and balls. Watch how he makes those loads happen. There's a video of his Hillside lecture and I like the way that a single camera will catch everything, but when you watch it you won't. One of my beefs with most DVDs is the camera cuts. Yeah, that's how we watch TV, but it isn't how people watch magic.

If you have Pat Page's DVDs (and they are cheap enough I expect everyone should have them), look at his Card Revelations. There's a trick with a card under a glass and the misdirection is lovely. He was doing it at a lecture and warned people he was going to do it and it still went right by a lot.

I think I learn well from seeing a good example, then reading the theory and trying to apply it.

-Patrick

Hi!
As said before Tommy Wonders material is outstanding and a must-see if you are interested in learning missdirection.
But Giovanni Livera's "Salt and Silver" is the course/effect that thought me how to use misdirection!

Your's,
Alexander

Check out Gary Kurtz book!

Yeah, Gary Kurtz, if you can wade through the horrendous number of typos and grammatical errors. He even mixes up left and right at one point. That book needs some hefty proofreading. But, yes, the advice underneath it all is good.

I find that a great way to misdirect, that often gets over looked, is using simple body language. Beginners, such as myself, tend to tense up when performing sleights, making it obvious to the spectator. To compensate for this, for the time being until I'm more comfortable with my sleight of hand, I will purposely tense up at times when no sleights are being performed, and initiate a pattern that the spectator starts to assume is a truth, rather than a deception. This teaches them to ignore my moments of awkwardness, which is a form of misdirecting their attention away from my real moments of tension. (Poker Face) Books on body language like "The Definitive Book of Body Language" by Allan and Barbara Pease, or anything by Paul Ekman, may help you with learning how to lie and misdirect with your body language. I'm sure there are actual magic books that make note of this form of misdirecting, but I thought I'd just offer more material. Oh, and whatever you do, don't look over there. ------------>

Another good book that talks about all kinds of misdirections and deceptions, how they work, and why they work, is " Sleight of Mind" by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde. In this book, neuroscientists work with magicians to better understand how magic tricks work. I got the audio book version on iTunes to listen to while driving, and I really enjoyed it and learned from it.

Tom Stone has some very high level work on this topic. I'd encourage folks to check it out.

Great advice given here. Study it all keeping in mind that misdirection is hiding moves in plain sight.

All of these books are great but it is too much conceptual to begin with misdirection. I was in this situation and after reading them I think I really understood what I should do and why but had no clue to "how". What helped me a lot is the Slydini book, with annotations by Ganson, where you have the detailed motion for the hands, the body and the eyes. Then by practicing these routines, you can enter in the real world of misdirection.

All the suggestions for study material on the topic are excellent and I second (or third or fourth) the Wonder/Fitzke/Nelms suggestions.

Another suggestion is to use youtube for something useful – watch videos of good performers at work. The trick is not so much the issue, as is watching how the spectators are watching the magic. How they are managed, when they burn the action...when they relax. You can learn a lot by watching top performers with that idea in mind.

Another practical idea is to learn a super simple, self working effect where there are essentially no moves to catch. Get to where you can go through the effect without thinking. At that point, just do it for people, but as you do it, practice misdirection you don't actually need. Even though there is no difficult move to try and hide, use the effect to practice what people have outlined here - get someone to look at you when you want them to...practice making on and off beat moments. There is no stress because there is no real need for the misdirection, so you can play with it and get good at the techniques in a no-pressure situation

One of the best effects for demonstrating misdirection is "Ten Count"

Even magicians anticipating the move cannot resist/avoid looking at the wrong place.

Funsway:

where is that effect found?

John

I think it was from The Professor originally. Write me if you can't find it elsewhere.

With a description of the effect from Funsway, I was able to find a published version of this - "From 1 to 10" in Lorayne's The Magic Book.

I'll have to give it a try!


John

You won't truly be able to learn about misdirection without performing and experience.

I'm talking putting real time in.

You can understand what it is and see others do it but you'll never understand it and what really makes it tick without performing a lot.

Like all of this stuff.

PERFORM.

I have had several "light bulb" moments on misdirection ....
I think because there is no ONE...single formula for everytime you need misdirection. Each time I need it now is a new experience... the newest routine I am working on ....I have a "move" that could be less visible if it was also timed with a misdirection que..... (this was pointed out by a magician friend of mine) during a practice session......
yeah his suggestion was ..... put in a funny line right there.... or say something odd or out of place at that exact moment

So I feel like even though I knew ALL OF THAT.... like yeah I have read about misdirection ... used misdirection ... but I really did not think about needing it right there in that moment in the routine.... well NOW it seems obvious and a new "light bulb" sort of moment..

David Acer's Spare Change was the first piece that I regularly did that allowed me to control where the spectator looked. It's a penny dime effect, and at one point, you show the penny in your right hand, then point the spectators to your left hand, open it to reveal the penny, and when they look back to your right hand, it's the dime. You rolled the double sided coin in your right hand at exactly the moment they looked at the left hand... if they'd been looking at the right, they'd have seen it, but the misdirection and beats were strong and baked in.

All of the other suggestions here are good, but if I was starting out (which I guess I am, again), I'd want something like this... misdirection built in to cover a move that couldn't stand on its own... call it misdirection training wheels.