The Complete Handbook of Swim Goggle & Mask Accessories

I'm an assistant coach for a college team and I handle all the equipment ordering. This book has already paid for itself — the chapter on strap tension and why some straps curl after a season actually explained something I'd been dealing with for years. The installation procedures are step-by-step enough that I handed the book to a work-study student and they re-strung eight pairs of goggles without wrecking any. I docked one star because I wanted a lot more detail on prescription insert pricing and the business chapter felt a bit thin on that side, but as a technical reference it's solid.

It's well written and thorough, but I found it a little too academic for what I needed. I'm a masters swimmer who just wanted to know if I should buy the expensive anti-fog spray or just keep using baby shampoo. The book answers that, obviously, but you have to wade through chemical explanations about pH and surfactants to get there. Also, the chapter on brands felt like a list of what's available rather than a verdict on who's actually best. I respect that they stayed neutral, but sometimes you want someone to just tell you what to buy.

I run a small swim shop and I originally bought this for myself, but I've started recommending it to my part-time staff as training material. The troubleshooting chapter in particular is fantastic — when a customer brings back a pair of goggles with a snapped nose bridge, the book has a table that shows whether it's a user error, a cold-brittleness issue, or a genuine defect. It's cut down on the number of free replacements we hand out. My only real gripe is that some of the photos and diagrams that are referenced in the text aren't in my e-reader copy, so I had to also buy the print version to see what they were talking about.

This is the first reference book I've found that treats swim accessories as an actual technical field rather than an afterthought. The section on how anti-fog coatings interact with different water chemistries is something I've never seen in writing anywhere, and the maintenance chapter saved me when my team started competing outdoors more regularly. The UV degradation data on straps is real-world useful. It's dry — make no mistake, this is not a book you read for fun — but it's exactly the kind of dense reference I wanted. I only wished it had a few more diagrams and exploded-view images of the goggles themselves.

It's informative, but it didn't quite match the marketing when it came to the business opportunities chapter. I was hoping for a concrete playbook on, say, the margins involved in selling anti-fog treatments as a standalone retail item or setting up a service where you re-seal mask lenses. What I got was more of an overview saying 'this is possible' without actual numbers or case studies. The technical chapters are genuinely good and worth the price alone, but if you're a purely business-minded buyer like me, temper your expectations.