Printing and Shipping Schedule - Last Chance to Make Changes to Your Order!
almost 6 years ago – Tue, May 08, 2018 at 02:21:32 PM

At long last, the time has arrived! 

Copies of Coach Jay's Chess Academy are being printed as we speak and will soon be in our hands, packaged and shipped out.

So, in addition to updating you with our schedule (at the end), we wanted to answer a few questions that will help make sure you get your packages as smoothly as possible!

What do you need to do?

After the conclusion of the campaign, you should have received an email from BackerKit. This is our fulfillment management partner and where you can verify your order, update your shipping information and make changes. We'd HIGHLY recommend you search your email inbox for "BackerKit" and make sure everything is up to date.

If you've ordered any upgrades or additional copies, these will be locked down on Monday and your cards will be charged, so make sure you double check the card number before then.

We will be sending out a reminder through BackerKit later this week--so make sure you read that email when you receive it.

When is the last day to make changes?

Monday, May 14th is the absolute last day to make any changes to your orders. After that, things will be locked down as we begin to package and ship orders. 

What is the timeline for printing and shipping?

• May 25: White/Yellow/Orange/Green Belts in hand from printer, packaging and shipping begins
• May 28: White/Yellow/Orange/Green Belts digital copies sent out
• May 26-June 4: All White/Yellow/Orange/Green Belts physical copies shipped
• June 8: Purple/Blue/Black Belts in hand hand from printer, packaging and shipping begins
• June 11: All digital copies sent out
• June 18: All physical copies shipped out

What can you expect?

The first thing you can expect is our sincere gratitude! The amount of support and encouragement (and patience!) we received through this process has been overwhelming. We know that the 6 month delay has not been ideal for anyone, but we are both incredibly proud of the finished product!

The extra 6 months has given us time to:

• Increase the amount of content--Each lesson book now includes TEN chapters, as opposed to the Five that were originally planned.
• Add a bunch more puzzles--Each puzzle book originally had 5 sections, one for each of the Five Disciplines of Chess (Defense, Endgame, Checkmate, Strategy and Tactics), but we've added an Essentials and a Challenge section to each of the seven belt level Puzzle Books
• Make MAJOR art and layout upgrades--our original books were made in MS Word and admittedly "textbookish," but NOW, with the extra time, they are GORGEOUS. Every page is colorful and fun--plus the extra layout art made it easier to communicate some complicated chess ideas in even easier ways!
• Get more eyeballs on the material--Each semester, Coach Jay coaches hundreds of kids... so rest assured, the newly upgraded Coach Jay's Chess Academy has been thoroughly tested and refined!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Your support has helped us to make our dream a reality. Our mission has always been to empower youth to grow through chess and we're excited that we have the chance to help parents and coaches worldwide as they do just that!

Chess changes lives. Chess unlocks young minds! Chess provides lifelong benefits that can never possibly be fully measured or appreciated. This is why we made Coach Jay's Chess Academy and this is why we will continue to work towards a day when EVERY child gets to be a chess playing child. :)

We cannot WAIT for you to get your hands on these!

CHECK you later!

Kyle and Coach Jay

Printing and Shipping Update
almost 6 years ago – Fri, May 04, 2018 at 01:09:12 AM

Hi everyone, 

Quick update (a more full update will come on Monday). We received the proofs for our print run yesterday and are SO excited.

We have moved into the printing phase and sent over the final files for White through Green Belts (the Chess Passports will also be part of this print run, and we will be sending those files shortly).

Blue, Purple and Black Belts will be submitted to the printer (who also, we found out is a pretty big fan of chess himself!), and on Monday, we will provide you with a schedule and let you know when these will be shipping. 

We can't apologize enough for the delays... but I assure you we've been working on these nonstop since the Kickstarter campaign concluded, while also running a chess program and teaching over 1000+ MORE kids to play chess! 

Thank you for your patience and thank you to those of you who have helped us with:

• Proofreading
• Design Help
• Printing expertise
• ...and much more.

Layout Update (Worth the wait, I promise--just look at these pics!)
about 6 years ago – Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 06:36:59 PM

Exciting News!

First and foremost, we are so aware of how delayed this project has been. It was never our intention and we apologize profusely--honestly, we had a number of contractors that did not work out, and when we tried to do it ourselves, we realized just how big of a job this was for two individuals with no professional layout experience.

As we went through and attempted to do the layout ourselves (after the previous layout person informed us they couldn't meet our schedule), we were pretty unsatisfied with how it looked. It was LOTS of great content, but it just didn't have a "fun" layout that we were proud of...

A Chess Parent to the Rescue!

Luckily, we had a chess parent (who was well aware of our struggles) approach us. This wasn't just ANY chess parent, though, this was chess parent with decades of layout and art experience... in scholastic publishing! 

We can't express enough how important this development is. Had we connected months ago, this could have been in your hands already. If we had met her a week later, we probably would have already sent these off to print and you would be receiving a "good" chess curriculum, but it wouldn't have been the polished version you will now be getting.

What a Difference a Great Layout Makes!

Here is a preview of the current status of Coach Jay's Chess Academy. I think you'll be able to see why an extra couple weeks can make a huge difference once you have the right person for the job!

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

We never anticipated that these would take so long to get in your childrens' hands! We can't apologize enough for the delays. In the next couple weeks, these will be printed and shipped immediately. Our new layout artist is cranking through these books at an incredible speed and EVERY SINGLE page we see from her completely blows our mind!

Thank you for your patience and support. The amount of content in these books has roughly doubled, the art and layout is now at a place where it would stand tall against any other professionally produced educational product, and we are finding ways to add extra bonuses (including Create-Your-Own Chess Passport stickers) into your packages to make up for these delays.

Shipping Begins By End of March
about 6 years ago – Sat, Mar 03, 2018 at 02:54:49 PM

Hello Backers!

I wanted to give you an update--we've managed to work through (almost) all the delays we ran into and are passing things off to a layout designer this week to get them into a format that's suitable for our printer. 

After that, we will be sending the books to be printed and will begin to ship these out to you. We will be packaging and shipping these out ourselves, so they will be shipping out over the course of a week or so, but we will certainly have all hands on deck for this!

Thank you for your patience. We appreciate it... this turned out to be far more time consuming (and expensive!) than we imagined, but knowing that hundreds of kids will soon be introduced to chess or take their chess to the next level has made this all worth it. 

CHECK you later!

Coach Jay and Kyle

January Update - Art, Production and Shipping Updates
over 6 years ago – Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 02:57:14 PM

Hello chess parents and students!

We hope you all had a fantastic holiday season and that 2018 is going great for you! We wanted to give you a quick update on the Coach Jay's Chess Academy production. But first, here are a couple sneak peeks at some of our new art!

Art Update

Because we've ended up with some extra funds (thank you so much) and had a number of delays, we've created some new art and updated some of our existing art. We're SUPER excited about this! We've shown these to a lot of our students and they LOVE the fun, colorful images.

Here's an update on what has been accomplished:

• We've had our lesson book and puzzle book covers professionally redone
• Our artist has also redone all of the Chess Passport stickers--they are amazing!
• We've also gone through and had all of our black and white artwork in our books colorized--it costs more to print in color, but we think it's worth it!

 Production Update

To be completely frank with you guys, we've learned a LOT about mass-production and some of the lessons have been costly and time-consuming. We are moving forward and are in the final stretch, but it has lead to a number of delays--for those of you who have corresponded with us during this period, thank you for your support, understanding and encouragement!

BUT--since all of our "complications" have occurred with our vendors and contractors, it has given us a good deal of time to work on additional content. The puzzle books now have over 100% more content! We have more than doubled the number of puzzles that you will be receiving!

We've had a significant set-back on our production. In our last update, we mentioned that we'd hired a layout artist/editor to take our books and prepare them for mass-production by creating InDesign layouts. Unfortunately, after almost 2 months, our contractor quit. We had only received one layout back (for the White Belt Lesson book), and that was incomplete.

What are we doing about this?

We are in the process of sending our books to another layout artist. We've explored a number of options and are about to send these books off to get prepared for printing, but since this artist hasn't worked with chess books before (and there are a number of nuances to doing a chess book), the layouts will take a bit longer as we have to work with them closely to make sure that no errors find their way into these books. (For example... chess notation can be VERY confusing to non-chess players!)

New Ship Date

Currently, we are on track to ship the beginning of March. We understand that this is a 3 month delay, and while this is actually pretty good for a Kickstarter project, it hasn't met our standards. 

We are sorry for not meeting our timeline and understand if you're frustrated. If you are upset by this and do not want to wait, PLEASE email me directly at coachjay [at] coachjayschessacademy [dot] com and we can either try to come up with a special arrangement or give you an immediate refund, no questions asked.

It's our honest assessment that the final product will be SIGNIFICANTLY better than we ever imagined and that you will find this to be the single best way to teach any kid to not just play chess, but EXCEL at this great game!

Thank you all so much for your support and patience. 

CHECK you later!

Coach Jay and Kyle