What Makes a Kung Fu Book Rare?

There are numerous books on the Martial Arts today, as compared when I started training there were few to none. But today you will find book after book on some aspect of the Arts. But even with all the books you can find today only a select few are considered the cream of the crop. When this books go out of print they become very expensive to buy that is if you can even find one. But what is it the makes a book rare and expensive ?

The answer to this comes because of a few factors. For one the book could have been written by a very famous master who has passed on and only a select number were ever printed. This would create a great demand to get hold of a copy. Another reason is the book in question might detail an very rare Art Form where not much has ever been written about, making it again rare,expensive and hard to get. Yet another reason is the book may advocate a style of a certain famous Master who never wrote books to begin with but was released by one of his students divulging the style for the first time.

There could in fact be others reasons that a book may be in great demand but hard to find. I like to think of my first book on Chang Shih Tai Chi Ch'uan rare because Chang seldom wrote anything down.. It is the only book with his seal of approval on it after I wrote the book, and the first page has his dedication in it with his seal. This made this book a one of the kind and I only printed a certain number of them for release more then Ten years back. Needless to say they were sold out quickly and became a rare item. Even if you can find a copy, I have seen it selling for a much a five hundred dollars.

Well it has been many years now and Master Chang has long passed away, and because of great demand I rewrote the book again for release again after these many years in an updated version. It has new articles and tributes to the Master as well as new and better pictures of his form. It is the same form of course but greatly improved after almost fifteen year's more of practice for perfection.

Along with the re-release of the Tai Chi Book I wrote a second book introducing Great Great Master Chang version of Hsing Yi called "Hsing Jing Ch'uan" which means "The Best of Hsing Yi". Again this has never been released up until now to the public. This is the making of the next rare book when out of print. Some my or may not know I am the adopted Son of Chang and that was the only reason he allowed me to release his Tai Chi Book in the first place. Sadly he passed away when I decided to release his Hsing Yi version but I am sure he would have approved as I went into great detail with in this book as well as creating a DVD's on both his Hsing Yi version and his Tai Chi Book for the first time.

My hope now these books and DVD's will serve to further spread the name of this great Master to the world. There will never again be another Master such as Chang Tung Sheng. It is said when Master Chang died a hugh amount of Kung Fu knowledge died with him. I am gratified I was able to save what I did of some of his knowledge for those looking to learn some of this renowned Master Arts for future generations to come.

For those wanting copies of these books and DVD's before the go out of print go to my web site at www.kungfu.org and order them there while there still around. Once out of print they are gone forever like most other rare books.