I ordered this book several weeks ago and have still not received it. My lulu.com login credentials no longer work (though they should, as they were saved using a password manager). Attempts to reset my password with lulu.com do not work: I keep being told I was sent a password-reset link, but no such e-mail arrives from them. I've written to lulu.com customer service, but no one has responded. I'll give it a few more days, but soon I'll open up a complaint with my credit card company. Has anyone else had trouble?

Hey Alexander, I purchased (I live in the states) Secrets at the end of November, it was processed/printed about two weeks after that, than I received it in the mail about a week after that, so no problems for me really. When I purchased it, there was an email confirmation with a link that took me to the site so I could look up the status of my order. Did you get the email confirmation when you made the original purchase? You can take that info and look up the order on the website, without logging in. As long as you have the order number and the email used for the order, you can look up the status (including tracking) in the top right of the site under the little person icon, again WITHOUT logging in.

The only link in the order confirmation e-mail takes me to the lulu.com site. To get any further, I need to log in, which I cannot do. (As earlier mentioned, I also cannot get a password reset link from the site.) So I'm stuck.

I am within the three week window you mentioned, so perhaps it will still turn up.

But the order confirmation, I think even in the subject line (i.e. Your Lulu Order #USD-123456) of your email has your number. So if you copy that, then go to "order lookup" in the top right corner of the website, and use your order number and email, you should find it. Again, if you hover over the person image, and click "order lookup" you do not have to log in.

That's very helpful. It says the estimated ship date is Jan 26, 2021 - Feb 1, 2021 (a full month after the order was placed).

Thank you, Luke.

Alexander

Awesome, glad you found it. Sorry as I was trying to attach an image to demonstrate the order look up but having some trouble. What I found on the website is that once the status finally changed to "shipped", it was already shipped several days before that, so I got it a day or so after the status changed. I hope it is the same for you!

Guys I am sorry some of you are still waiting for books to turn up.

I had the same problem when I ordered my own review copy; it took three weeks to arrive when normally I'd get it in about seven days and a friend in Singapore recently contacted me to tell me his book took 28 days to drop through his door

I have spoken to LULU myself recently and they apologise but they tell me they are working with reduced staff and some of the print facilities they use are also working with skeleton crews due to the present situation.

They have also informed me that international orders are taking longer to process and deliver, so if the book has to be printed outside your country you may have to wait a bit longer than normal.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I ordered my copy on December 24... and received it yesterday.

I think that is reasonable, given the current Covid crisis and the North Eastern storms, (ships from Mass), the holiday delays, and the fact the book is a "print on demand." product.

I remember when you had to wait up to six weeks to get ANYTHING you ordered back in the day...

Plus, I cracked this book open last night and have already found three amazing things I plan to actually "do" and not just read about... very impressed with this book!

The wait will be worth it!

Oscar

I have all Scott’s books and Secrets is another winner! I can’t recommend it enough!

Thankyou, glad you like it.

I am a latecomer to this and whilst I am a huge fan of Scott's work I am very much "over" the need to be perceived as being real. It used to be important to me when I was a full time reader but these days for a million personal reasons I don't care for it. For this reason I swithered over getting the book as I knew from the ad copy that there would be much in the way of essays about this issue.

In the end, I couldn't resist and I'm very glad of that! Scott's writing is always interesting as is his reasoning even though I may not agree with it. And the effects are, as ever, top notch. I love the development with the first set of routines and I especially love the effect with Pi. Total winners.

David,

You are probably right I may have harped on about it for long enough.

It's what makes you "you" and if that's what it takes to continue to come up with stellar material then by all means continue!

This is an interesting subject, or at least I find it interesting, and maybe this isn't the right place to discuss it, but after reading David's previous post I sat for a while last night pondering the "need to be perceived as being real" a concept which I know many performers are dead set against.

After contemplating it for some time I decided it isn't really about the individual being perceived as being real, but more a case of that individual attempting to convince his audience, that the phenomena he is trying to recreate, may possibly be based on reality.

Of course, the magician has become so synonymous with trickery that an audience may consider it ludicrous if he were to try to convince them that his rendition of the ambitious card is anything more than an entertaining card trick, rather than the result of his ability to use magic to defy the laws of physics. But in the eyes of the public mentalism hasn't become completely synonymous with trickery yet, it's heading rapidly in that direction but it's not quite there.

So why bother, as long as it's entertaining then it's OK yeah? Well yes of course it is, but why settle for just entertaining when with a bit of effort you could leave some of your audience questioning their perception of reality, even if only for the duration of your show.

But then why worry about their perception of reality? Well if you can get them thinking "maybe, just maybe" so that they suspend their own disbelief at least for the duration of your time on stage, then who knows even the adults in your audience may view the Hippity Hoppity Rabbits through the eyes of a child.

To my mind, through the eyes of a child = the sense of wonder we feel when we encounter something that reaches beyond the limits of our understanding.

Just a thought.

Very good points Scott.

I am not against setting out to be perceived as real but I'm going to be blunt and sayI suspect some use it as a shortcut rather than learning to be a better, more powerful entertainer. It's kind of like the notion of "emotional mentalism" which I think some use as a lure to get people interested in something they normally wouldn't be interested in rather than learning to actually be interesting themselves, if that makes sense?

It's taken a long time to get to this way of thinking but one man that helped get it to this point is Dani DaOrtiz who, with nothing but a deck of cards, has the kind of impact on people I think most mentalists could only dream about. So it can be done in magic and it can even be done with card magic and that's where I'm at right now.

I agree with you on all points. I once watched one of my old mentors, who was about 60 at the time and registered blind, hold a crowd of 20 drunk student lawyers at a graduation party, spellbound for 20 mins with nothing but two pairs of plastic children's safety scissors and the strength of his personality.