New Books, New Trailer, Coming Soon...

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Hi Everybody!

A little update on what's been going on behind the scenes at KrisMadden.com.

Heart of Darkness is nearly finished being reformatted for use in practice reading. The text will look similar to the text found in the "Dishabituation" chapter in Learn To Speed Read.

I'm also working on editing and re-releasing Arnold Bennett's book Truth About An Author. Arnold Bennett was good friends with H. G. Wells and is considered to be one of the greatest English novelists of the late 19th-early 20th century.

The book is his autobiography on his literary career and what it meant to be a writer in around the turn of the century. Before wikipedia, or computers, in a time when the typewriter was the latest greatest office machine, Bennett gives readers a look into how he came to be a writer and what he hoped to achieve with his work.

It's been out of print for quite some time, and the editions that are available still have the old English spellings like "humour" and "colour" and "practise". So I've gone through the entire text and updated the spelling and done a little reformatting for clarity, but no edits have been made to change the author's work, only to further enhance it.

 

The poster is a pretty blatant hint about what the new speed reading trailer will spoof off of. I'm actually more of a Return of The Street Fighter fan, than I am of the first film, either way Sonny Chiba is just plain cool. Got to get back to work, take care everyone.

 

- Kris Madden

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

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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

THE STORE IS COMING!!

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It's official ladies and gentlemen, the Kris Madden store is under way with a grand opening on Monday, November 2, 2009. I'm excited to show everyone the new tools and products I've been developing for increasing reading speed and comprehension.

I'll be posting updates here on what you can expect to see in the store... and who knows, maybe even some sneak previews of whats to come.

Stay tuned.

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.