West Vancouverite Tony Waiters, formerly coach of Canada's national soccer squad, has a fourth book, Coaching the Team (World of Soccer/Raincoast $9.95) and continues to expand his publishing domain internationally. After publishing Coaching to Win with Collins Publishers in 1984, Waiters asked himself what a large publishing house had accomplished for him that he could not have accomplished alone. Using the same critical-mindedness he employs for soccer to market his own books with some advice from soccer-playing B.C. publisher Michael Burch of Whitecap Books Waiters has envisaged "a one-stop shopping service to coaches". (He says a conventional publishing company doesn't know enough about soccer to understand where the market for his books is, or what his books are specifically about.) Following his new book about coaching for 9-to-11-year-olds ("the golden age of soccer"), he hopes to produce a series of books about special interest areas such as coaching for girls, team psychology, coaching goaltenders and heading the ball. "Learning to head the ball," says Waiters, "is like learning to cross the road. There's a proper time to teach it. There's medical evidence to show that 9-to-11-year-olds should be discouraged from heading the ball because of possible danger to the spinal area." By encouraging soccer clubs and organizations across North America to buy his books in volume, Tony Waiters has become a best-selling B.C. author and publisher with almost no sales through bookstores.

[BCBW Autumn 1989]