Tag: Family History

Writing a family history book can be a tremendous gift for your family, especially for future generations.

But it can also be a daunting project. There could be seemingly unlimited amounts of research to dig into. Should you conduct interviews? If yes, then how many should you do?

Just what should you plan on including in your family history book?

First, Determine your Goal for your Family History Book

A family history project can take on many different forms. It could reach far back through many generations, or it could cover a shorter, but significant, period of time.

You may wish to focus on the life of one particular person or provide brief accounts of many.

Pinpointing what you hope to accomplish with your project will help you determine its scope and direction.

If this is your first experience with a family history, you may want to keep the scope of it more limited. You’ll have a better chance of completing the project, and it will help keep you on track.

If your goal is to create a thorough documentation of your family to share with future generations, then you will need to conduct a significant amount of research.

Do you see it as a reference document or more of a narrative account? For the former, you can focus on collecting records of facts. For the latter, you will need supporting materials to add context and stories to round out the presentation of your family’s history.

If you are hoping to create a more visually interesting and engaging type of family history book, here are some suggestions you can explore to help you accomplish this goal.

Bring Your Family History to Life with Personal Anecdotes

Including stories about individuals, and sharing details about their personality and character, is a great way to bring people to life. This is why family history interviews can be so valuable.

You can interview living family members about their own lives or gather stories and memories about relatives who are no longer living,

The more in-depth you can get into an interview, the more rich details you can include in your family history book.

Some family members may prefer to answer questions in writing, and this can be an efficient way to obtain factual information about dates and locations. But in-person interviews are often the best source of stories and memories that come to mind during the back-and-forth of conversation.

These conversations can take many hours, so you will need to gauge how much time and effort you can devote to them. For ideas about what questions to ask, here’s a good resource with a list of suggested questions.

Use Photos and Images for a Richer Experience

Photos of Family Members

The most obvious photos you should try to include are those of family members whose lives are covered in the family history book. If possible, include photos from different stages of the subjects’ lives. These images can tell an interesting story all on their own.

Today, obtaining photos from far-flung family members is easier than ever. You can simply ask them to scan their photos and email you the digital copies of the images. There are a number of ways to scan and digitize photos. You can do it yourself with a scanner at home or even with a smartphone. Or you can make use of a professional service — which will usually give you the best results.

This article from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) explains the pros and cons of the different options and provides some suggestions for equipment and services that can help.

Period Photos

The world has changed drastically over the last several decades. Even if no photos exist of your actual family, or where earlier generations lived, you can still provide context by including relevant period photos.

For example, if earlier generations immigrated from a different country 100 years ago, you could find photos depicting that time period. An image of a typical homestead from an early settler could be used to illustrate what it was probably like for your own family members if they were also homesteaders.

Or, if your family originated in a different country, you could include images of what the town or city looked like during the time period when they lived there.

Even if images are not from the same era, they can still provide context if the landmarks are interesting.

One man we worked with recalled how his father used to ice skate on the lakes surrounding the palace where Korean kings used to reside. While we didn’t have an actual photo of his father ice skating, a present-day photo of the palace and its lakes still provided an interesting and relevant visual to support this memory.

Keep in mind you may need to obtain permission to reproduce any images that are not from your personal collection. It’s best to make sure you can legally use an image before proceeding.

Make Use of Interesting Documents

Official documents, such as birth or marriage records, passports, and even school report cards, can provide something visually interesting to support important milestones or even minor ones.

Copies of personal correspondence, or anything written by hand that has special meaning, such as a family recipe, can help bring individuals to life.

To show the historical context, you can include newspaper clippings of any noteworthy news events from the relevant time period.  Maps are also useful for illustrating where people lived and how members of the family moved around.

Another useful graphic that is simple to create is a timeline showing major events in your family’s history. These can easily be created with either word processing or spreadsheet software.

Liven Up the Narrative with Dialogue

Interspersing your family history with the actual words either written or spoken by family members adds another interesting dimension. The way people speak and write often conveys their personality and can bring them to life on the page.

If you conduct interviews of family members, try to include some exact quotes that add color and convey personality. Not only does this make for more interesting writing, but it also gives readers a glimpse of what the interviewee was actually like.

Pulling excerpts from letters is another way to include exact quotes. If you are fortunate enough to have copies of correspondence, this is a wonderful way to make use of these gems. You can take photos of them and highlight relevant passages as a way to provide both the actual words of a family member and an interesting visual.

Create A Visual Family Tree

Showing your family’s lineage can be complicated and even boring if you rely on lists or straightforward charts.

There are many creative ways to illustrate your family tree. Some people like to include photos to represent different family members. Others make use of graphics to make charts more visually interesting.

Much of this decision will depend on how large and how complicated your family tree is. You will need to keep space limitations in mind if you hope to include several branches of your family. Or you can display different parts of your family with their own separate visual graphic.

There are many free templates available to help you design your family tree graphics. Family Tree Magazine has a number of templates that are free to download from their website. There are even simple templates that can be used with Microsoft Word.

Consider Including a Reference Page

When writing a nonfiction book, writers inevitably end up with reams of interesting research that doesn’t make it into the final story. This can be because of space constraints or because they take away from the readability of the book.

When you are creating a family history, you are usually not trying to win the National Book Award. Much of the research you have compiled may actually be worth preserving.

But if you are trying to write a family history narrative that is also readable, cramming every bit of research into the book may not be feasible.

One way you can have both an interesting family history book and share bits of research that don’t make it into the book is to include a reference section. This can include citations for your research so the information can be tracked down, if necessary. It can also contain a section of back matter, which is where you can provide more details or facts about your family history.

Don’t Underestimate the Work Involved

Writing a family history is a wonderful gift to create for your family and will be appreciated for generations to come. But it is a major undertaking, requiring hours of research, organization, and writing.

Keep in mind there are many resources available to help you complete your family history project. With so many different ways to approach the project, you are sure to find one that matches your vision.

You’ve spent the last couple of years researching your family history. You even hired a professional genealogist to track down the information you couldn’t uncover on your own. Now you are ready to share your findings with the rest of your family.  

You could go with a basic family tree diagram, or a journaled scrapbook, but you really want to make the stories of your ancestors come alive in your book.

So, how do you accomplish this? To get started, just follow these steps:

9 Steps to Turning Your Family History Into an Intriguing Nonfiction Story

1. Narrow Your Scope

Depending on how far back your research took you, you could have thousands of people in your family tree. So, who should be included in your book?

The first step to writing your family history book is to decide who and what you want to write about.

Do you want to write your personal family history, with stories about the direct descendants from both your maternal and paternal lines?

Or are you just planning to tell about one side of your family, with historical background facts thrown in?

Are you going to focus on one particular person, like your favorite grandma, and tell the story of how she and her family immigrated to America? Or do you want to tell the entire family history from as far back as possible?

Narrowing down exactly who you want to include in your book, and how much supporting information you want to add, will help you to figure out what to write about.

2. Decide What Style and Tone to Use

As with any good book, it’s important to nail down the style and tone you wish to convey.

Do you want your book to be lighthearted and humorous? Or do you prefer a more serious tone?

Do you want to write in an informal way, as if you are passing stories down for future generations? Or would you rather keep it more formal and academic?

Much like the tone you use when speaking, a writer’s tone is the way in which they say things. Your book could include sad stories about family members who lived through the Holocaust, but your tone might still be uplifting and hopeful.

Style, on the other hand, is the words, syntax, sentence lengths, and structures that you use to support your tone.

Deciding on (and sticking with) a style and tone for your writing is imperative in keeping your readers’ interest.

3. Make an Outline

Before you can actually start writing, you need to first organize your facts and documents into an outline for your book.

An outline is the map you will use to structure your writing. It can be very detailed and include notes about every person and story in each chapter, or it can simply be bullet points showing who and what you plan to write about in each section.

Your outline should also include a plan for how your book will be laid out. If your book is about your entire family tree, you may decide to write it in several parts, with each part corresponding to the separate branches.

Or, if you are just writing about your paternal ancestors, you might want to have each generation represent a separate chapter.

Regardless of what your outline looks like, the important thing is to write one. If you start writing without a good outline, the process will take much longer, and your book will more likely end up being thrown together haphazardly, with important details left out.

4. Conduct Supporting Research

You have the skeleton for what you want to write about, but you will likely need some supplemental information to help make your story more interesting.

It’s not that your five-time great grandparents didn’t live exciting lives, but when you are dealing with the distant past, you’re not likely to have more than a few facts and documents about your ancestors.

To make up for the lack of stories and pictures for those generations, you’ll need to conduct some period research.

For example, if your family history research showed that your ancestors lived in England in the mid-1600s, it might be interesting to include information about the English Civil War.

Or, if your ancestors immigrated to the United States from Germany in the late-1700s, your story would benefit from adding some background information about the Industrial Revolution and how it affected German farmers.

Taking the time to research what was going on in the world when your ancestors lived will not only help you better understand their lives, but it will also add great depth to your book.

5. Interview Family Members

Do you have any living relatives who may have first-hand information, or would have more details about the family stories that you have been told?

If you are lucky enough to still have grandparents who can fill you in on some of the family secrets, it is well worth taking the time to interview them.

While you can gather a great deal of valuable information from just listening to them tell stories, we recommend that you have some questions prepared to help jog their memories and make them think about things that they might not naturally tell you.

We also suggest that you make sure to record your interviews so that you can refer back to them when you are doing your writing.

For some great starter interview questions, check out our guide to family history interviews.

6. Start Writing!

Now that you’ve narrowed down exactly what (and who) you want to write about and have decided on how you want your book to be structured, it’s time to start writing.

In general, with family history books it’s best to write in chronological order. You can start with your own personal story and work your way backward, or you can start with your earliest known ancestor and work your way to the present.

Either way, don’t bounce around between generations. That can confuse the reader and cause them to quickly lose interest.

Another way to ensure you keep a captive audience is to add as much detail as possible to your writing.

Nobody wants to read a book full of just names and dates. Incorporating lots of personal stories and background information in your book will make it more interesting and memorable.  

For example, if you have a document that shows that Joe Smith died in 1875, and another document that shows his widow got re-married in 1876, writing “Joe Smith died in December 1875. Sally Smith re-married in August 1876” is a bit dry and boring.

However, adding more details will automatically make the story more intriguing:

“Joe Smith passed away in December 1875 after battling pneumonia during Virginia’s coldest winter on record. Just nine months after his death, his widow, Sally Smith, married a local widower who had four young children of his own.”

When you are writing your book, it’s also advised that you consider documenting your sources.

This is not a requirement, and some people prefer to leave sources out, but it can be helpful to know where the information you found came from. Even if it was just from a story that your great-aunt Betty told you.

7. Have Your Book Edited and Proofread

As tempted as you may be to skip this step, don’t!

Even the most experienced writers benefit from having both an editor and a proofreader look at their work.

An editor will be able to read your book with a fresh set of eyes, make sure it flows well, and let you know if there are any areas that are confusing or missing information.

They will also check for any inconsistencies or conflicting facts in your book.

Then, once your editor has worked their magic, your proofreader will check for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or typos, and will ensure that your book is polished and ready to publish.

8. Pack Your Story with Photos and Images

Do you have pictures from your grandmother’s baby book? Or how about a copy of your great-grandfather’s family portrait? Adding images to your book will help bring life to the people in it.

It’s one thing to tell the story of your grandparents eloping and having their honeymoon at Coney Island. Including pictures of them together on the Cyclone roller coaster will take your book to the next level.

And if you are lacking in old family photos, consider adding images of ship manifests, immigration cards, military draft records, or other documents you came across in your research.

By adding these things to your book, you are not only telling the history of where your family came from but are showing visual evidence that those stories are real.

Another helpful visual to include is a family tree that shows all the people in your book and their relationship to each other and you. This can help your readers keep track of the numerous characters in your family’s history.

9. Publish Your Book!

Because this is a family history book, chances are you are not planning on trying to sell it to the masses. So, attempting to get picked up by a traditional publisher is not something you will be looking to do.

However, you will probably want to have at least one copy of your book printed (even if you are planning on mainly distributing eBooks to your family members).

While publishing can be done on your own through platforms such as Amazon KDP, it does pay to hire an independent publishing company, if you can afford it.

Not only will an independent publisher help you with the process itself, they can also assist with formatting and adding visuals so that your final published product is the best it can be.

If you are unsure what publishing route is best for you, check out this great blog on choosing a publisher for your family history book.

You have a story to tell, and you are confident that it’s worth telling. It has characters, drama, and is filled with emotion. The best part is, it’s all true!

Now you want to preserve that story for those you love and generations to come. 

So, what do you do once you’ve finished putting words on the page? You want to publish your story in a tangible book form, but you aren’t looking to sell it for money. This book is for friends and family only. 

How do you choose a publisher for a private memoir or family history book if you only need a few copies?

We spoke with Nancy Barnes, author of Stories To Tell: an easy guide to self-publishing family history books & memoirs and founder of Stories To Tell: Self-Publishing for Independent Authors. She helped us discover the essentials you need to know to find the right publisher for your book.

Private Memoir vs. Family History

Step one to finding the right publisher is to understand what kind of book you are writing. Is it a private memoir, or is it a family history book? Here’s the difference:

Private Memoir – A private memoir is written from your point of view and may only include specific periods of time from your life. It can be anecdotal and may have a unifying theme throughout. 

Family History – A family history book is just that. It’s a report of family history that includes as much detail as possible, including a family tree, photos, documents, letters, and other ephemera. It might even include stories that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Understanding what kind of book you are writing can help you grasp what support you will need from a publisher and how much you want to do on your own.

A family history book with a lot of documents can be very time consuming and may warrant paying a little extra to have professional help to put it all together. A memoir, on the other hand, might be something that you can tackle mostly on your own.

Publisher vs. Self-Publishing vs. Independent Publisher

The next thing you need to know, before you open up Google and start searching, is that “publisher” isn’t exactly the right term for what you need. What you want to search for is an “independent” or “hybrid” publisher. But, what’s the difference? It breaks down like this:

Traditional Publishing

Getting your book published by a traditional publisher involves querying publishers, or more likely, agents who will try to get your book picked up by a publisher. This leads to a long period of waiting and rejections. But books do get picked up by publishers, so it can be worth the wait if you’re looking to sell your book rather than creating a keepsake for family.

When a publisher purchases the rights to your book, you will get an advance and a percentage of all sales. The publisher takes over the publishing, marketing, distribution, and pricing.

The intent is to sell a lot of books and make a big profit, and the publisher is willing to pay you for the opportunity to do it.

There’s nothing wrong with that, if selling your book is your goal. But it’s not what you should be looking for if you’re just hoping to have a few copies to give as gifts to your family.

“Unfortunately, family histories and memoirs are not big sellers, so publishers won’t even look at them. If you’ve written a family history or if you’ve written a memoir, you’re looking at a self-publishing company, which is a different thing. And then, amongst them, there are different models as well,” says Barnes.

Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is the act of publishing a book without the help of a publishing company. In other words, you are doing it all by yourself.

This process can generally be done completely online, through a self-publishing platform such as Amazon KDP or Barnes and Noble Press.

The upside to this route is that you don’t have to wait to find a publisher that wants your book. You simply pay to play. The downside is that you’re on your own. It’s up to you to make sure that your book is error-free and professional-looking.

Independent Publishing Company/Hybrid Publisher

Simply put, an independent publisher or hybrid publisher is a publishing company that is not affiliated with any large conglomerate or cooperation. These publishers, who are sometimes also referred to as “author service companies,” focus more on the services they provide to you than on selling the finished product.

Acting as a cross between a traditional publisher and a self-publishing platform, these publishing companies allow the author to pay for only the help that they need.

Since there’s no reason to expect to sell a lot of copies of your private memoir or family history book, there’s no need to pay a publisher for services, such as marketing, that you won’t need. With independent self-publishing, you simply pay for what you need to create your book. 

According to Barnes, “It can all be done without a publisher. That’s what self-publishing is. But the term that we use is independent self-publishing, which means you keep all the rights, and nobody is making a profit off your book other than you.”

4 Steps to Publishing Your Book 

Okay, so you’ve finished your book and are ready for an independent publisher to help you get it into print. Congratulations! Now what?

Before your book is ready for that final printing stage, there are four essential steps you need to go through:

Step 1: Editing

Even Stephen King and J.K. Rowling’s books go through editing. Why? Because authors are human. No matter how good a writer you are, you will make a few typing mistakes or leave out information that your readers want. And, when you edit your own work, you’ll tend to read what you think you wrote, not what’s actually on the page.

Put on your thick skin and be open to suggestions. In the end, editing makes your book better.

There are three phases to the editing process:

1. Peer Edit – Find a friend or relative who has a good grasp of the English language to give your manuscript a once-over. Ask them to look for anything that comes across as confusing or vague. Take all of their suggestions to heart, though you should only make changes that make sense to you. This phase will likely discover some basic typos and grammatical errors, too.
2. Professional Editing – Now it’s time to bring in a pro. A professional editor will look over your manuscript to analyze the flow of the story. Does it make sense? Are there gaps and unanswered questions? This phase helps to make your book the best it can be.
3. Proofreading – This is what most people think of when it comes to editing. Proofreading is a final line-by-line, word-by-word reading that will weed out any remaining typos, grammatical errors, or other basic mistakes. It’s the polish on your finished work.

An independent publisher can help you find the editor or editors you need, or you can do this on your own. Just remember, at some point, you will want to hire a professional editing team to make your book amazing and error-free. It’s money well-spent.

Step 2: Design

Design encompasses everything from the layout of the text and photos to creating a cover for your book.

While you may have a photo or image in mind for your cover, you still want to have a professional do your design.

Your independent publishing company should have several designers from which you can choose. 

Step 3: Printing

Your book is ready to hit the presses!

Some independent publishing companies have a specific printing company that they work with and will include the printing in your costs.

Others may shop around to find the best price for the quality printing you want, and let you pay the printer directly.

Either way, your independent publishing company should help you determine exactly what you want your final product to look like, and what kind of printing you need to get it there.

“Many people want beautiful books for their families. So, a lot of them will do two versions of the book. One of them is the beautiful, heirloom book that will last for years, the hardcover. And sometimes, because of money, a softcover version that they can buy and distribute. Or they can put it up on Amazon for family and friends to buy for themselves,” says Barnes.

Step 4: Distribution 

Distribution for a private memoir or family history book is minimal.

That being said, your independent publishing company should handle it for you once you know all of your options. 

“Distribution can be Amazon, or it can be having it with the printer and then drop-shipping it to friends or relatives,” says Barnes. “But it still needs to be figured out. Most people at the very beginning think ‘I only need 20 copies,’ and they haven’t thought that through because you usually have another 20 people waiting behind those 20,” says Barnes.

Finding a Good Independent Book Publisher

As you search for an independent/hybrid book publisher that can be your partner in making your book become a reality, there are some basic things you should keep in mind.

First of all, they should be able and willing to help you through the four steps listed above. In addition, there are some other things to keep in mind:

Own that ISBN.

This is essential. You should have your ISBN in your own name.

If your publisher assigns it to you or offers it for free, it usually means that they have ownership of your title and you’re trapped with that company. And once a book is registered to a specific publisher (and not to you), you can never move it to a different publisher.

An independent publishing company should be able to help you purchase an ISBN in your name.

Don’t pay a markup for printing.  

An independent publishing company should help you get your book ready for publication and help you find a good printer, but it should not make money on the printing itself or any sales thereafter.

Don’t pay for what you don’t need.

“Beware all-in-one packaging,” says Barnes, “because they often are just charging more for services which you will never utilize. Buying a la carte is smart.”

You want to know what each step should cost so you can understand what you are paying for as you go.

Ask how you can save money.

Are you able to photoshop your own pictures? Do you have a friend who is an editor?

A good independent publisher shouldn’t be afraid to help you save money on the process if you ask. The goal is a great finished product, and a happy author, not a big sale.

How Much Will I Pay to Publish My Book?

According to Barnes, you should expect to pay between $1,500 – $3,000 to an independent publishing company. That does not include the printing itself or copies of your book.

A larger book, a book with many pictures or documents, or multiple rounds of editing can raise the price. Otherwise, if you’re paying more than this, you’re probably paying for something you don’t need.

The best way to avoid getting ripped off is to understand how much each step should cost so you know that you’re not overpaying. Ask for itemized estimates for anything you’re expected to pay for during the process.

When it comes to printing, consider how many copies you will need and what quality you want. Then, try to match that with a price point with which you can live. Your independent publishing company can help you find printing options that will fit your project and your budget.

A Good Independent Publisher Should Be a Trusted Partner

The good news is that independent and hybrid publishers are abundant. There’s a good chance that you can find one that will take on your project and help you make your book a printed, polished reality.

The best ones will work with you every step of the way and make sure that your book is coming out just how you want it to be.

As Barnes says, “It’s a deeply personal sharing with the people they love. Memoirs are more reflective, and they’re thinking ahead to the future. It’s a really strong act of gifting the next generation. Family history can be an even bigger gift. These books are a reflection of a tremendous amount of information gathering. They can be very valuable even to two generations down the road when they may not have access to the sources that the author will have.” 

Your book is a gift for generations to come. It pays to find the right independent publishing company to help you make it amazing.