I’ve shared this with subscribers to my newsletter and via social media, but in case you’ve missed it, I have a new book coming out. It’s titled The Perfect Drill – Crafting, adapting, and running volleyball drills and games for high performance.
Wednesday, January 3rd, the challenge is to see how highly ranked we can get the book on Amazon. We’re aiming for #1 in the Sports & Outdoor category, under which both Coaching and Volleyball sit. Actually, as this screen grab from the website shows, Volleyball sits a couple levels deep. Amazon clearly doesn’t rate it at the same level as sports like basketball, soccer, and football.
The challenge is happening because 90%+ of those who responded to my poll on the Coaching Volleyball group on Facebook said to go for it. It’s been a great few months of visibility for the sport. Why not see if we can continue that by putting a volleyball coaching book in a place where volleyball books are rarely (if ever) seen? To do that, we need to get as many sales as possible within a 24-hour period.
So that’s what’s going on. Here’s a bit about the book.
Who’s the book for?
While I wrote it with relatively early-career coaches in mind, based on the feedback I received from experienced coaches in my beta reader group, they found it useful as well – especially in terms of focus and running drills effectively. One of them told me:
“Each section got me thinking critically through a lot of areas that I can challenge myself in identifying drills and progressing my team throughout the season. I like how you talked deeply about a subject, and also gave pitfalls to that subject as well.”
What’s the main idea?
While there’s no such thing as one perfect drill, there can be the perfect drill for what you’re trying to accomplish based on your specific circumstance. The main idea of the book is to provide coaches with the ability to easily either create a drill, or to optimize something they already have in their toolkit, to achieve the best outcome. It also emphasizes the importance of how you run the drill. After all, any drill is only as good as the coaching that goes into it.
How long is the book?
If you read the book straight through, it’ll probably take a little over an hour. So definitely not a long one. That’s on purpose. It’s tightly focused and doesn’t wander off on tangents. As you’ll find, focus is a major theme of the book. As such, it would have been contradictory for it to not also be that way. I’ve developed a resource page where you can delve into topics that are only lightly touched on because of that focus, though.
Will there be both print and ebook formats available?
For the challenge, only the Kindle version will be available. That’s for two reasons. First, to have the biggest ranking impact you have to focus sales in one specific format. Second, the print version won’t be ready. I’ve requested the proof, but it takes a couple weeks to ship, so it will be a little while before it’s ready for sale.
What’s the price?
For the challenge I have the price set at $2.99. It will most likely go up afterwards. I figure, though, this is an easy price point for coaches – even more so if they are sitting on Amazon gift cards from the Holidays!
Special bonus
Anyone who buys the book during the promotion will be eligible to take part in a special Q&A I’m going to run for readers. You’ll be able to ask any questions you have about drills and games. It’ll be completely open. And, of course, I’ll record it for later access.
Any other questions? If you have any questions I haven’t answered here, please let me know. I’ll make sure to address them.
Otherwise, I’ll be sending out emails and posting on social media to announce the start of the ranking challenge at 6am US Eastern time on Wednesday.
