I'm Officially A Pirated Commodity!

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For some authors, seeing their name in print is when they know they’ve made it. For actors, it’s seeing their name in lights on Broadway. For the band “Nirvana”, it was an accolade to have your song parodied by “Weird Al”. And for me, it’s having my book pirated in the torrent and rapidshare communities.

All the achievements previously mentioned have a common thread for the artist: People like your stuff enough advertise it. And it means something particularly special in my mind, as an artist you’ve made something worth sharing. And this was why I didn’t distribute the book through torrent and pirate sites, because I knew that if the book was worth its salt it would end up there eventually. It was released November 2, 2009 for download, and now almost three months shy of its release anniversary, Learn To Speed Read, has been made available to the pirate communities. My book is now worth being stolen (not really since it’s free to download and share but some users might not know that). And it feels great.

I’d like to send out a big “THANK YOU” to all the pirates and their communities for supporting and distributing my book.

On another note, more updates to follow this week. I’m back from a long trip and have stock piled a lot of material to post. So stay tuned, because the best is yet to come.

 

Sincerely,

Kris Madden

 

PS: If you want to download the book from one of the sites I've come upon. Here are some links:

http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/eLearning_book/LearnToSpeedReadTheOfficialKrisMaddenWorkbook.html

http://www.ebook3000.com/Learn-To-Speed-Read--The-Official-Kris-Madden-Workbook_81597.html

http://www.downarchive.com/ebooks/216698-learn-to-speed-read-the-official-kris-madden.html

http://www.ebookee.com/Learn-To-Speed-Read-The-Official-Kris-Madden-Workbook_667996.html

http://www.sosotech.com/html-study/learn-to-speed-read-the-official-kris-madden-workbook.html

http://www.directdownloads.ws/downloads/305872-learn-to-speed-read-the-official-kris-madden-workbook.html

Paperback Is Now On Sale!

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  • Write a 100-original-word review about my book (good or bad, doesn't matter, as long as it's honest)
  • Post it online, anywhere available to the public, and provide a link to my site: krismadden.com
  • Send me a link to your post through the Contact Form on this website, with your name and email
  • I'll verify the word count and make sure the writing hasn't been copied from another post
  • If everything's checks out, I'll send you a secret code
  • Go to my store and enter the code when you checkout
  • Ta-Da! You get the book for 12.99
Read More

Happy Halloween! and Book Updates

in

Hi Everyone,

Just one more day until the store opens and my book "Learn To Speed Read" is available.

Upon taking on the project of writing this book, my goal was to not make it like all of the speed reading books that I had read through. Originally the book, wasn't even going to be a book, but a pamphlet, of about 10 pages. I wanted teach people some fundamentals and then be done with it.

And then I thought I could add on exercise booklets to purchase, and I could charge for those, and slowly the project went from being a central core work to a series of disassociated parts. I thought, "My God! I'm turning into one of those programs with the 5 DVD, 7 audio CD, and 40 book encylcopedia on Super-Subsonic Secret to Successful Speed Reading" And I stopped.

The book became bigger, and grew from 10 pages to 100 pages. And after it was put together the book felt light. That's not to say that it was all fluff, but rather, it didn't feel complete, it needed more. So I restructured the book and dived deeper into the lessons and exercises in the book.

It's finished now with a grand total of 366 pages, with all the fat trimmed off, from its original 400 page format. It's designed as a six-week course in speed reading methods and techniques. I look forward to sharing it with everyone come Monday.

Have a great Halloween everybody!

 

-Kris Madden

Less Than 7 Days Until The Store Opens!

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Hi Everyone,

Forgive for the lack of updates, my energy has been devoted to making sure everything is in line for the store's grand opening, which has kept me pretty busy.

I have been wrestling with the issue of whether or not the ebook version of "Learn To Speed Read" should be free, and I have decided that the book will be FREE! It will have a creative commons license with it, that will allow you to legally share the book with friends, family, teachers, etc. The print and kindle version will be priced accordingly.

After going back and forth between giving the ebook away for free, or selling it. I came to the conclusion that if the book was worth anything, people were going to share it with other people, because that's what we do when we like something, we share it with our friends. At that point, I knew that if I didn't allow a free ebook then I'd be turning many possible readers into criminals, and I didn't want to do that.

I also felt that this was an  educational book and should be available to teachers, administrators, students, etc. for free for learning, and I thought, "Who isn't a student, a teacher, an administrator, in some form in their life?"

I wanted to share with everyone an exerpt from an email I received a little while ago, because it helped remind me of what life was like before I could read well:

"I'm a sophomore in high school, and I recently found out that I read very slow compared to the rest of the kids in my English class. I attend a very competitive school, so it's not a surprise that a lot of the students read fast and probably don't sub-vocalize. I, on the other hand, read very slowly. I sub-vocalize almost every word I read. It really slows me down.

It doesn't feel good when I am assigned to read 40 pages a night, but end up reading only 20 because I can't read enough in the time I have. Reading slow has also hurt my love for reading. I've always loved to read but reading slowly just makes it tedious sometimes.

Anyways, I was looking for ways to stop sub-vocalization, when I came across your video. I tried your technique of saying 1-2-3-4 as I read and it worked! I was so delighted. My eyes swept across the page in a fluid line, not chunky as it usually goes. I also didn't have to reread anything because I understood what was happening. And also as I read, a picture formed in my mind. It was awesome."

The goal of the book is to help people read more efficiently, increasing both their reading speed and comprehension. My hope is that it helps people with their reading goals as it did this student, as the videos have others, and how my research has helped me.

Have a great day everybody.

 

-Kris Madden

In The Works

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To be honest, the attention that my old speed reading videos have garnered has surprised me. I made them about five years ago and then switched from being a tutor to a vocational case manager for the special ed. dept. and hadn't thought about them in a while.

You can imagine my surprise when I went to read Lifehacker at the end of a long week, and there was I was staring right back at me. I really had no idea that the videos were helping so many people. But the information is all scattered about on the internet, which makes finding the content hard to find.

I built this site so that people could find all the information in one place. Even though it is merely a skeleton now, I am working on fleshing it out with exclusive content. There will be more lessons, exercises, videos, etc. to come in the near future.

I am also working on  a workbook that outlines an entire course taking the student from an average reader to a superior speed reader. I hope everyone enjoys what I've been working on.