Basketball Coaching

by Steve
(Minnesota)

Question: Hi, my name is Steve and I am a varsity girls basketball coach. I've been coaching for a relatively short period of time (7 years) but live and breath basketball. The issue I've had with many of the basketball coaching books I've read is that so many of them concentrate on a single team (as opposed to a whole program approach) and so many are written by authors that have huge talent pools with many talented athletes to choose from. I coach at a small school and, although I haven't won any major championships I have not had ANY talent to work with. We have made such major improvements in a program that has never been successful though. I have well over 150 pages of plays, thoughts, tried and true methods that maybe haven't led to "championships" but have brought a sense of excitement to a sport that has never had it before. Some have been borrowed and modified but many are my unique ideas. I want to write this as a book from the "normal" coach to all the other coaches that aren't blessed with a ton of natural ability in their system. Is this something that is worth pursuing? Like I said, I really already have all the information and I think it would appeal to the masses when it comes to high school basketball program building. I'm just on

that fence between could I actually turn this into a book or am I crazy? Thanks.


Answer: I don't know enough about the world of basketball to know the size of the market for coaching books. However, it sounds like you have identified a problem that would be faced by many coaches at non-professional levels.

You have a couple of options. One is to write a proposal, submit it to some literary agents, and see if they think the market is big enough to interest a publisher. (A catchy title that encapsulates the premise would help, as would endorsements from other coaches.)

It wouldn't cost you a lot of money to try a few agents, and writing a proposal takes far less time than writing a book, so this is a low-risk starting point.

The other and riskier option is to self-publish and market it to coaches. Are there are organizations for coaches who might be willing to endorse, recommend, or sell it to their members? You probably will not make much money from this route, so you will have a strong need to control costs while still creating a product that looks good. Bare minimum: you will need a professional editor and book designer to make a credible product. Print-on-demand publishing is one way to control costs, since you can print only as many copies as you can sell.

Best of luck.

Comments for Basketball Coaching

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Oct 26, 2012
 Thank you
by: Steve

Thanks for the info! Honestly, I'm not looking to make money off it (of course if I did that would be great as well), I just don't want to lose money off it if that makes sense. I'll take a couple days and piece together a proposal and get some data on my audience size and other books that are fairly similar (although I probably have all of them already, seeing as how I went through most of them with little help towards my program). I think I will also try to touch base with some local authors as they might be able to help me through the process. Thanks again!

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