Blessed by the Potato

I had been off, away from the blog, working on a third edition of the Value of Simple (mostly struggling with how much I could excoriate certain robo-advisors for not listening to me before it became libel), and it’s been going very slowly. Instead, I accidentally wrote an entirely different book on, of all things, Curling.

How do you accidentally write a book??

Well, I ran a development league at the curling club. The idea was that we’d have a mix of experienced curlers and lot of new curlers, and it would be a home for those fresh out of our learn-to-curl programs. As part of that, I wrote a weekly email with a development tip to send around. And you know me, that wasn’t a short tip like “line up to the target before you get into the hack”, no, it was pages and pages with diagrams.

So by the end of the year I joked that if it felt like they had read a book from me, they weren’t too far off, all together those emails were almost book length. So of course a few people chip in with “you should make it an actual book!”

And, well, here we are.

What’s it called?

Curling for Beginners and Improvers. In a bold, highly unusual step for me, the branding and title are actually very descriptive of the book’s scope and target audience.

What is it about?

Curling! It’s a how-to guide (I seem to be building a specialty in that field) with a big focus on helping relatively new players. It was written in the first place as a supplement and extension to our 4-week learn to curl program, so includes the basics like how you deliver a stone, along with some discussion of common errors and why we do things the way we do. It includes a discussion of the theories behind directional sweeping, and a very light touch on strategy.

I know that the directional sweeping stuff in particular is something that is missing from the market — there are no books covering it yet, and even on YouTube there are precious few resources to help get newbies up to speed on the topic.

When is it coming out?

The release date is set for Oct 16th, to line up with the start of the curling season. With all of the tragedies of the last year, I had to squeeze all of the slack out of the publication timeline so there is a small chance the print edition may get pushed back if there’s a hiccup in the process (I’m expecting the ARCs to arrive any day now, and if there are mis-prints and I have to start over with the printer that will add delays). But e-books are finalized and available for pre-order, and I expect pre-orders for print editions to open up around Oct 1.

How does it compare to other books/resources out there?

I know I’m a bit of a weirdo when it comes to writing/publishing in that I do an environmental scan to make sure I’m actually filling a need and not just piling one more book out into the world (which if I ever decide to write fiction I will have to get all the way over), but I was surprised at how few curling books are out there. I know it’s a niche sport and all, but given how many dividend investing books are out there, I was surprised…

Anyway, What’s Your Call? only came out two years ago, and is entirely devoted to strategy. So I kept the strategy section fairly light and focused on the club-level, first-time skip.

Curling: Steps to Success would be the most similar competitor — that one and mine are both basically books on how to curl. It came out just before the directional sweeping effect was discovered, so doesn’t have anything about that in there. It’s a bit of a different voice — I’m more focused on the casual player/newbie, while Sean Turriff has more of a focus on turning you into a competitive player (so more on teambuilding and drills to do, mental performance issues, less time on the basics). Mine has more Star Trek references, which really is what people come to a curling book for is it not? His has more drills to use in practice sessions. Overall I think if you finished mine and wanted even more with a different voice (hearing/reading the same information different ways does help it sink in more) I would say that’s a good one to get next.

Curling for Dummies has the recognizable “for Dummies” branding, but is ancient (don’t be fooled by the 2020 release date that Amazon shows, it’s just a reprinting of the 2001 edition). It has a lot of non-how-to content that still holds up that I don’t bother getting into (like how the ice is maintained and where granite comes from), but the descriptions of the equipment and methods are (a lot, a little, respectively) out of date now. They do cover the no-lift delivery at least, but the idea of how to line up hadn’t quite matured to where we are today (it was still close enough to the transition from the old backswing delivery). The sweeping section teaches sweeping on a slider, which is how I learned but generally discouraged for beginners now.

Curl to Win is also out of date (it says it was published in 2009 but feels even older than Curling for Dummies, with Russ Howard’s anachronistic-even-for-the-time promotion of the backswing delivery, and anyway looks like it’s out of print now). I didn’t manage to finish Coleman’s books, which were more autobiography than guide (at least as far as I made it).

And that’s about it. It’s a pretty small field for books, which I was surprised by when people told me there was a need for such a book after I made the joke about the weekly emails. Even if my Curling for Beginners and Improvers and the other books on the market had perfectly overlapping scopes, there would probably still be room for it just to hear the info in different voices and approaches.

Of course the scopes aren’t perfectly overlapping: most of the other books also seem to split their focus on helping someone totally new to the sport while also including “become a champion!” type aspirational sections (and right in the title of some). I don’t know if that helps sell books, and maybe I’m missing out by limiting my focus. The simple fact is that I’ve taught hundreds of people in various learn to curl sessions, clinics, and special events, but coached/played zero national champions, so it’s simply not in my wheelhouse to talk about anything other than getting started in the sport and then getting a little better at the recreational level.

There are a bunch of non-book resources, too. Jamie Sinclair’s YouTube channel is terrific (if not quite structured for a start-from-scratch viewer — an advantage books still have). Matt Bean has a well-structured online course available. Both of those offer videos which can really complement written descriptions well, so be sure to check them out, too. For strategy, there’s resources like Chess on Ice.

Interesting, I’ve never heard of this “Curling” that you speak of.

The book is also for you. Curling is a sport that I love, and I try to share my joy in it with the reader, and help bring you along. It’s so inclusive because you can have multiple generations playing together in a single game, which also means it’s a sport that can keep you active for life. It meets you where your abilities and passions are: you can have people putting their all into it with incredible physical effort that spikes even an elite athlete’s heart rate to the top of their range, alongside people who are just trying to focus on the strategy aspect and keep their exercise to nothing more intense than a light walk.

Most importantly, the Canadian winters fly by when you’re curling every week.

I’m sold, where can I preorder it?

I will update this post when more options become available. For now, the e-book is available for pre-order at ~all of the major e-book retailers. And many of them are offering a pre-order discount! You can also pre-order a print copy through my Value of Simple store (yes, set up for a totally different book) — note that those can only be shipped within Canada, but if you want it signed I can do that (though honestly, defacing the book like that will probably only decrease its value).

Pre-order the e-book from Amazon Canada or Amazon US (rest of the world should get taken to their country from the US link) if you have a Kindle reader.

Pre-order the e-book from Rakuten Kobo, Google Play, or Smashwords, Apple, or many other retailers if you have a Kobo, android tablet, or other device that you don’t want to go to Amazon for.

Should I sign up for curling now?

Yes! Most clubs are accepting registrations for new members right now (September, if you’re reading this later), go ahead and sign up if you’re interested in curling, take their learn-to-curl clinic, and the book will come out in time to help supplement those on-ice lessons. Or just sign up and hope with the book and some YouTube videos you’ll figure it out in time. It’s fun.

I see you have a “blog” section on the site for the book. Are you transitioning into a curling blogger?

No, that’s to put up a few posts talking about the book and the writing process, and to act as an “errata” section for any errors or changes that may be needed (e.g., if an academic study in the future debunks one of the competing theories on directional sweeping, that’s where the update will go). I’ve got a few little teaser posts scheduled leading up to the book’s release, including one talking about the behind-the-scenes editorial decisions and the scope I decided the book should have.

So for example, Curling for Dummies is roughly twice as long as Curling for Beginners and Improvers. It’s not because CfD has that much more information on how to curl — I haven’t done a quantitative word count comparison but I’d estimate it’s actually got a little less on delivery and a lot less on sweeping. It’s because CfD’s scope includes so much extra stuff that I thought was unnecessary: a history of the sport (yawn), a description of how curling ice is made and maintained (cool, but not something the average player needs or likely wants to know — the equivalent of including a chapter on Zambonis in a book on hockey or a chapter on lawnmowers in a book on golf), a bunch of “top 10” lists, most of which aged like milk, a section on becoming a coach yourself… you quickly get a lot of pages that, IMHO, weren’t relevant to the core purpose of the book. Anyway, discussing those decisions is that post.

I plan to put up some bonus content (e.g., a chapter that I cut that I was really on the fence about keeping in there), a bit more behind-the-scenes info, and then the page will be mostly a static sales page for the book.

Seriously now, how do you accidentally write a book? Like, how exactly did this go from a bunch of emails to a coherent book?

That is the topic of another blog post on the new site.

In brief, I made the joke about my emails being so long that I had basically forced everyone to read something close to a book by the end of the year. And some people encouraged me to make it an actual book.

Even with a lot of words written, it was a bunch of tip-of-the-week things — I had a few that chained together more coherently for a broader topic, but before it could become a book nearly all of it needed to be restructured and anchored to some coherent order. Plus some of it was stuff specific to our curling club (like how to find a spare, information about our other leagues, etc.), which didn’t make sense to keep. I had to create a detailed outline of everything I’d want a book for new and developing curlers to learn.

Oh, and I had to do it fast — that joke was in my end of season message, so if I wanted to shoot any photos on ice, I had to get to it ASAP before the ice was all gone. The original emails had a bunch of good-enough-for-an-email pictures and illustrations, including pictures I may not have had copyright to, a bunch of figures mocked up by freehanding in MS Paint (one of which I kept in the book because it was cute and to be able to show where this all started). So I worked feverishly, got an outline hammered out, then listed all the photos and poses I might possibly need for every chapter, then got to shooting with Alexis, the book’s official photographer (and it’s partly her fault — I asked her if trying to turn all the tips into a book was a dumb idea and she was actually supportive so she got dragged into the project).

In the end, we had a bunch of new photos and I created many new figures (or re-made them but cleaner). The tips had to be extensively re-written, and a bunch of new ones added — just under half of the word count is new stuff that was missing from the original set of tips. Once the ice was out I spent the early summer writing and re-writing (and thankfully finished before the serial tragedies started hitting).

When they announced a move to commission-free trading (and fully free, not just a few cents for the ECN), I knew I was going to have to open an account there and add it to the book and course as an alternative to Questrade.

I’m not going to get too far into the details of the platform: it’s a brokerage, it has a proper desktop web interface {shade. thrown.}, you can buy your all-in-one ETF and pay no commission.

Neat features: the order entry screen updates how much cash you’ll have left after the order in real time as you change your ask price and quantity. This may help prevent that rare mistake where someone rounds up on their division step instead of rounding down, and tries to buy one share too many.

The account opening procedure was very modern and slick: I filled out all the forms and then it sent a link to my phone so I could take a selfie and a photo of my ID to confirm my identity. I had all that submitted in very little time, and in 4 days my account was open and ready for funds to be added.

However, that slickness wasn’t without it’s issues.

Minor issues: First off, my driver’s license wasn’t accepted as valid ID during the sign-up process. I suspect it’s because the application automagically filled in “North York” as my city when I entered my address, but my license says I live in “Toronto”. I was able to complete the sign-up by using my passport to verify my identity, though (which doesn’t have an address listed).

Second, I entered all my chequing account information, which they were supposed to be able to use to further verify my identity (sending me off to Tangerine’s sign-in page, kind of like how the CRA’s partner sign-in works). That failed, too, but didn’t stop the application process. I manually entered my chequing account information (transit number, etc.) to link my bank account, but that ended up not sticking and I had to spend the requisite 52 minutes on hold after the brokerage account was activated to call in and get an agent to tell me how to do it.

In case this helps anyone else skip the part where you sit on hold for an hour, I had to send an email to directbrokerage@nbc.ca with the subject “For Banking Indexation”, with my name, phone number, account #, and a void cheque image attached. For Tangerine if you don’t have physical cheques, they have a button on your chequing account to press where you’ll get a PDF of a void cheque for just this sort of purpose. This is one spot where Questrade has a bit of an edge, with their ability to self-serve some of these tasks. They did manage to link my chequing account just 4 days after that email, though, which was nice.

And just like other brokerages, you have to go through the tedious process of agreeing to all the individual exchanges’ agreements, re-type your name and occupation and all that for the Americans, etc.

One other thing to watch for is your login number: this is different from your account number, and they will only flash it at you once when you go to activate your account. Miss it and you won’t be able to log in!

Inconsistencies: As relatively smooth and quick as things went (I suppose being under the hour mark for a brokerage is fast for hold times these days), the whole process had more inconsistencies than I’d like to see in a financial institution acting as the custodian of my investments — NBDB could really use a little bit of a clean-up and alignment of their processes for that final bit of polish.

My biggest peeve is that we are training people to use the top-level domain (TLD) as a quick verification of identify for security purposes. If you’re expecting to deal with NBDB.ca, but the address bar says something different, you may be getting phished. National Bank has an identity crisis, using multiple names for themselves and multiple TLDs. So far in just one trade and the account set-up process, I’ve been directed to and have received emails from:
nbdb.ca
nbc.ca
bnc.ca
And also visited nationalbank.com once and linked them in my bank account as Banque Nationale.

Please, pick one TLD and name for yourselves. Or at least the English or French versions for respective audiences: when I’m trying to go to NBDB, NBDB.ca makes sense. NBC (National Bank of Canada) I can parse out too, though it’s not as intuitive (the American television network comes to mind first for what this domain could be), but bnc.ca doesn’t ring any bells in English.

There were also several inconsistencies in the email instructions they would send. For example, to log in for the first time, they tell you to go to a certain page and “click on Client centre” but the button is actually “Sign in”. It’s not hard to figure out what to do, but the instructions don’t quite match what you actually have to do.

Then to link my chequing account, the email helpfully told me to call in and which two menu options to press after calling in. I really like that little touch — those phone trees can be havoc to navigate, so it’s really handy to know that I press 4 – 1 to get to where I need to go. Except they were the wrong instructions and I had to get transferred anyway!

Summary: It’s a brokerage account. The sign-up process was refreshingly automated and fast for a Canadian financial institution, and best of all at no point did I have to mail anything or visit a branch. Trades are commission-free, and the interface is perfectly serviceable. I do wish they’d settle on one domain name though.

Way back when I was getting ready to launch The Value of Simple, I set some definitions for success. I hit “not-failure” pretty quickly, but have only just reached “success”: I’ve made minimum wage (at least, a rounded-down amount that approximates what minimum wage was back in 2014 and ignoring all post-publication effort) on the time taken to write it!

Now, it’s felt like a success for far longer than that. Seeing that it’s actually helped people invest, is getting good reviews, and seeing people wholeheartedly recommend it to their friends made the whole endeavour feel worthwhile. But I still had that first monetary definition in the back of my mind… so hitting it still feels like an added accomplishment.

I had also said that that was about the point at which I might consider doing the whole grind again. As it happens, I do actually have an idea for another book that I might do next…

…But I don’t think I will go anywhere with it, at least not in the near term.

Getting VoS done was a personal triumph in working hard/side hustling/project management/etc., and a personal best for productivity. But burnout is a thing. These days my inbox and to-do lists are filled with small side projects that I can’t get around to completing on time (that tax video doesn’t look like it’s going to happen before taxes are due, for example) — I’m not in a hurry to dive into a major one.

Anyway, a big thanks to everyone that helped make this a success: people who bought copies, recommended it to their friends, took the time to write reviews, read beta versions, and more that I’m sure I’m forgetting!

July has just ended and the Practical Index Investing for Canadians course is progressing well. Roughly 70% of the content is done and online, everything that had been projected for June and July, with a few bonus items as well (though two of the videos are still rendering here, they have been shot and will be up soon). I’ve updated the syllabus here.

The towel-day pre-order price is on its way out. You have until Friday to get the course at the incredible rate of $49 (no coupon code needed — that’s the price that’s set on the course platform site). After that it will go up to the next pre-order level before release, and to the final price in the fall.

The updates will be coming slower now, though. You’ll notice in the syllabus that though most of the course is there, there are only a few things scheduled to be completed in August, and nothing for September. That’s because I know I’ll be too busy at the day job to get any material up through then, so it won’t be until October that the final bits of the course are up and done.

If you have any suggestions (or prefer that I prioritize one section for August) send me an email and let me know!

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First time hearing about this? The Practical Index Investing for Canadians course is an online course to help you learn how to become a do-it-yourself investor. It builds on the material in the Value of Simple as well as the Money 201 and other lectures I’ve done since to help you get started as DIY investor.

June is nearly over and the course development is progressing well. There are a few parts near the beginning that I had flagged for completion in June. With just a week left, a few may slip into July. However, section 8 (Taxes and Tax Shelters) is complete, including parts that were not expected for several months yet — overall the progress is going well.

I think prioritizing that section was a good move, as it was of interest to some of the students who had signed up for the early access, and it creates one complete section to better show what the course is and what it adds above and beyond the walk-through in the book.

I’ve updated the syllabus here. [Edit: here is the latest syllabus for July] The Towel Day/pre-order price of $49 will continue until mid-July, when it will ratchet up as the full release gets closer. If you’re interested in learning more about how to become a do-it-yourself investor, be sure to sign up soon!

Things have been quite busy at work lately, but I’ll be taking some time off over the summer (and I’ll have fewer all-nighters) which will also help keep the course development on track (and I may even be able to catch up on the timeline).

In other news, Brexit Brexit CPP.