Hail to Hoops & Hockey: The Book

Submitted by Seth on

2013-14hailtohoopsahockey

It lives. And so does the DraftStreet deal.

MGoBlog's new preview of the basketball and hockey teams is running through the printing press right now. Our 100% indie book is the same length as the football one—128 pages—and split about 2/3rds to hoops with the back 44 pages switching to State Street. The first copies should begin arriving in about two weeks. We sprung (for like $2k) for 1st class shipping for the Kickstarter backers this time so we can track orders and get them all to you expeditiously.

About the DraftStreet Deal:

So like the football book we've made this one $15.00 (if you get it shipped that'll tack on about $5.00 more depending on where you live). However thanks to our online fantasy game partner, if you don't have a Draftstreet account yet, you can still have it for $15 straight-up AND keep your $15 as a deposit on DraftStreet AND get another $15 in your account on top of that. Take that link to get here:

draftstreetdeal

… and create your account. You'll also be able to use our code (77HATESDONKEYS but it should automatically apply if you take that link) on Draft Street for 100% on top of whatever you put down (so if for $15 you get $30.00 in your Draft Street account and a copy of HTTV Hoops and Hockey sent to you). When you're done with that they'll send you an email with a code to input into our store (make sure you use the link in that email) and a code to use there for free shipping. Once I've got word your deposit is in I can send a book.

Super bonus: This method of buying the book is most beneficial to us since we get paid double per book.

So to review:

  1. Take this link right here to the offer page.
  2. Create a new account on Draftstreet and deposit $15 or more, then watch whatever you deposited double (use the code 77HATESDONKEYS if it doesn't)
  3. As soon as you put in your deposit, DraftStreet will send you an email with a special link back to our store, and a code to use there to get you free shipping. If you don't receive an email, contact [email protected] and he'll get you squared away.

Caveats: there are some. 1) Limit's one per customer. 2) They're looking for new members so if you've already got an account there (even a free one) you'll be locked out, at least on that email address. Also locked out: Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Vermont, and Montana. Apologies to hockey fans in Louisiana and Arizona—try the store,

Order from the MGoStore It is $15.00. Shipping will make it about $20 depending on where you live and taxes, for example it's $21.49 to first-class it if you live in Michigan, $21.62 to send it to your cottage in Evanston, and $20.27 to have it sent to Louisiana Ice Arena in Carencro, LA, or the White House.

In Local Storentus Any Underground Printing outlet—including Moe's—in Ann Arbor will have it, and I may have some other venues in the coming weeks (if you have a store and would like to have a few copies there email me.

To see what's inside and who helped put it there, hit the jump.

Contributions: BASKETBALL

  • Brian Cook previewed the team and also summarized the career of Trey Burke.
  • Ace covered every opponent except the RPI drags. ISU, the Puerto Rico opponents, Duke, Zona, Stanford and the entire Big Ten, with extra coverage for MSU, Indiana, and Ohio State. I wanted another page on Wisconsin too but Ace threatened union action.
  • Ken Pomeroy gave us a stats-based preview of what to expect from this team.bline
  • Ira Weintraub of WTKA interviewed John Beilein to get Coach B's thoughts on how this team stacks up to others and what he plans to do with them.
  • John Gasaway of ESPN Insider gave us a reassessment of the ceiling for Beilein's Michigan program.
  • Craig Ross wrote the Entire History of Everything Ever, or at least the entire history of UM basketball since the fifties.
  • Joe Stapleton of UMHoops tracked Beilein recruiting: 3-stars, unheard of kids, and all of those who shot up the rankings long after he uncovered them.
  • Josh Bartelstein, last year's co-captain, shared an excerpt from his book regarding the PSU loss and how the team responded to it.
  • Seth Fisher wrote the ed letter and all the captions and charts and other whatnots all through the book, plus a 2-pager on Beilein's coaching history I admittedly included mostly because we had great photos.

Contributions: HOCKEY

  • Brian previewed the team in great depth. Greater than in the stuff he's been posting this week, because I kept mercilessly expanding the page lengths.henri
  • Adam Schnepp, a Hockey's Future contributor better known as MGoBlueLine around these parts, provided the requisite autopsy of the tourney streak-ending season.
  • Jason Paul of Michigan Hockey Net offered his and myriad coaches' opinions on the Michigan recruits (hopefully) arriving in 2014 and beyond.
  • Joe Wolke of the Michigan hockey site Center Ice Hockey, and whom you know around here as Center_Ice, diagnosed the power play problems over the last few years, and how this team might replace Merrill and Trouba.
  • Craig Barker of the Hoover Street Rag served as designated history guy with the story of the 1963-64 champions that bridged two M hockey eras.
  • Gregory Garno, the Michigan Daily's hockey beat writer, provided short capsules on the nonconference schedule then delved into this new Big Ten Hockey Conference thing.

Contributions: PRODUCTION

Once again the reason our books look better inside than other preview mags is we enlisted the inimitable Courtney Fathers of Corkboards and the Detroit Red Wings organization. When her hockey duties interrupted, Scott Hilling, aka MGoBlueForLife stepped in and brought us home. Daniel Sirdofsky read through every single page to find copy errors, and everybody who ever endorsed me on LinkedIn for this skill ought to go credit him instead. He also did a lot of the last-minute tracking down of photos. And of course Underground Printing and Rishi Narayan for their friendship and partnership and distributorship.

Contributions: PHOTOS AND IMAGES

These books are tough enough to produce without having to bother a million photographers for their shots, which is why we're so lucky to have both Eric Upchurch 8200381852_98c5ce0257_oand Bryan Fuller who know how to point a camera and what to point it at; they've captured some truly magical images.

Right with them were the photographers of the Michigan Daily, who covered a large part of our hockey needs. They are: Adam Glanzman, Patrick Barron, Paul Sherman, and Erin Kirkland. Glanzman also met with me to pour through and photograph the Daily archive photos we used.  Also helping us out with hockey was regular BlogThatYostBuilt picture guy Bill Rapai. This photo was not taken by him------------->

…because the obvious reason. Thanks Bill!

As usual nobody can address Michigan history without a major assist from the UM Bentley Historical Museum. We also got some help from the Ann Arbor District Libraries.

My favorite image in the book comes from UMHoops's Dustin Johnston and if you know Michigan basketball photos and our tastes at all you know what's coming:

01 Stauskas Snarl UM - OSU 2013-1

Dustin Johnston Dustin Johnston UMHoops Dustin Johnston Dustin Johnston Dustin Johnston Dustin Johnston UMHoops now stop misattributing this people who use search engines plz k thx. Dustin also provided some brilliant photos for Wisconsin that you'll instantly recognize but I won't show them because Ace's union are serious people.

Speaking of pics that never get attributed, Eve Astrid Andersson captured Henri the Otter of Ennui. Tom Sorenson, the photographer for USA Hockey (specifically the U.S. National Development Team Program) provided many of the shots of incoming players. As usual Jeremy Zieders (MonuMental) did the cover and section images because who else could?

We also featured contributions from Sam Webb of The Michigan Insider, Andrew Knapik of Michigan Hockey Mag (my former employer) for his GLI photo, Robert Crawford of Duke blog DukeBasketballReport.com, Minnesota Athletics, K-State Athletics, Stanfordphoto, Ross Obley of Florida State Athletics, Iowa State Athletics Communications, John Fajardo of Long Beach State Athletics, Richmond Athletic Public Relations, West Virginia Sports Communications, Canisius Athletic Communications, Le Moyne College, Arizona Athletics, The Boston University Daily Free Press, Cranbrook hockey coach Andrew Weidenbach, Cutler Martin (unpaid and unsolicited, NCAA), Dan Hickling of EliteHockeyProspects, Whiteshark Photography, Adidas Super 64, OJHL Images, and Stacie Wasem of the Aberdeen Wings.

The Dedication:

This book is dedicated to Mom, and the lack of educational debt she provided me.

Brian's, specifically.

More things we thank: The Michigan Daily Sports staff, UMHoops, Kenpom, Chris Heisenberg, 247Sports, Rivals, Scout, EliteProspects, Sports-reference.com, Collegehockeystats.net, NCAA.org, hockeydb.com, and the staff, coaches, and players who represent the University of Michigan in basketball and hockey.

Comments

R Kelly

October 2nd, 2013 at 3:35 PM ^

Seth,

What method are you using to ship the magazines?  I am moving in a little over a week and can forward my mail, but if you are using UPS or Fedex i don't think I will get the magazine in time.  Can I give you a new address to send it to?  Thanks.

jmblue

October 3rd, 2013 at 12:58 PM ^

I'm curious: are these annual magazines a profitable enterprise for you guys?  Given the enormous start-up costs they apparently require and the fairly steep cost of purchase, are they worth the effort?  

How would the cost compare to say, making something downloadable on a Kindle or similar?

 

Seth

October 7th, 2013 at 10:15 PM ^

yes they're profitable. The problem with downloadable--I did an ebook thing for Penn State's football and a couple other blogs have done the same--is with all the pictures they have to be PDFs or similar technology, and that means they're not going to be able to go on Kindles. We tried to shrink HTTV down to the 13-meg limit and got to 46 mbs.