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General => Technical Help => Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation => Topic started by: Keith Sherwood on Wednesday 23 March 05 13:54 GMT (UK)
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Hi, Everyone,
Does anyone have any advice to give on the subject of actually making an attempt to publish an aspect of one's own family history - on the printed page, I mean, not just on the internet.
Are there reputable publishing companies who might produce a fairly low-key book or booklet; or do other Rootschatters have experience of their own in this matter. On the one hand, I realise that you can pay large amounts of money to a publisher just to see your own name in print. And on the other there are the firms like Phillimore's, for example, who produce excellent, high-quality and expensive-to-purchase editions.
Some time in the future I was thinking of giving it a go...
Best wishes,
Keith
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Hi Keith
If you are after a low-key type of (A5 perhaps) booklet to begin with, there are small printing companies in most main towns who do this type of thing ie. local/family history booklets, football programs - glossy or not. I would suggest getting your stuff into some kind of order ie. what you would like to include ......... stories, photos etc., typing it out (publishing program on the PC) and seeing roughly how much space you would need. Have a look at other booklets (your local library perhaps) and make some enquiries with a couple of local printers where you can see some of their work.
Much would probably depend on how many copies you require, ie just for immediate family (mustn't forget a copy for the local libary and county record office) or might it appeal to a wider audience for some reason.
It's a difficult one sometimes because new information is often coming to light all the time. When I typed a lot of mine up some years ago (one for myself and two copies for my dad and grandmother as Christmas presents), I chose to use a large loose leaf A4 binder so that I could add to it (and theirs) without problem - as I have done over the years.
Good luck
Casalguidi
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Thanks for all that advice, Casalguidi,
I'll bear it all in mind before I take the plunge. I suppose showing someone/people what you have when it's all organised and set out might determine how one publishes it eventually.
Very best wishes,
Keith
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Hi Keith
Have you considered 'burning' your history to a CD or DVD?
That way, you can produce as many copies as you like, relatively inexpensively, and 'on demand'.
Paul
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Hi Keith,
In my humble opinion you have to ask yourself one big question first, i.e. what the eventual format is to be. You could quite easily produce a simple booklet yourself, even using just Microsoft Word. You could then burn it onto a cd and give this to any local printer who could put it into book form for you and run off as many copies as you want, all relatively cheaply.
If however you want the end result to be a little bit more sophisticated and you want to use a professional publisher and editor, then it gets a little bit more difficult. First of all you have to produce at least a draft copy, then you have to find a publisher who is interested enough to take on the job. In order to find the publisher you may need an agent - even more difficult!
Enough said I think until you answer the big question!
Jill
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Thanks so much for your further consideration of this matter, Paul and Jill. Once I've eventually put the thing together, then I'll decide on how sophisticated it out to be. Lots of hard work before that moment, though...
Keith
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I recently self-published a book about my Dad - containing poems and diaries that he wrote as a young man, and some wartime diary material. I did a whole lot of research about his life as a framework for his own writings (and I must say everyone I contacted was most helpful!) I typed it up myself on a floppy and took it to a small local publishing company who couldn't have been more helpful. They advised on cover design and binding, formatted the whole thing, and printed it for a very moderate price. I have given lots of copies away to family (and one person actually bought a few extra!)
It is a great feeling when you actually hold your book in your hands. And quite emotional, when you have done it as a tribute to a wonderful Dad who is no longer here.
MarieC
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Hi, Marie,
What a touching and encouraging story. I must get down to work, tracing the story from beginning to end of a particularly elusive member of my family, with many twists and turns along the way. So important we put it all into words for posterity...
Keith
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My brother and I produced our family hisotory, about 12 copies for family members, some years ago. I typed it up on word, scanned in photos, certificates, etc. We got them 'bound' with one of those spirally ring things at a local print shop. The result was very impressive - though I say so myself!! especially as it ended up about 3 inches thick!
The trouble with Family History, though, as I am sure you know, is that it is never ending. My brother has just started putting pen to paper for the 'supplement'!! And very soon I am expecting the first draft for typing up..........!!
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Hi Keith
There is probably a large difference between "printing" and "publishing". If you put the book together yourself and get the book printed as an A5/A4 book, it would be relatively inexpensive - you are the publisher. Printers can assist with the design and layout, but usually have no input as to the content.
My advice for the above would be talk to a local printer before designing & setting up the book. The size of margins, for example, can be critical to the type of binding (as I found out too late & had to reset much of my book). Colour, is, of course much more expensive to print than black/white. If you sequence pages correctly you can reduce the number of pages that need colour, thus reducing cost. Offset printing costs per copy (as opposed to photocopy or "print on demand") reduce significantly with volume.
If, however, you want to have the book designed & edited etc etc, you either have to pay to have this done (plus pay for printing) unless there is such content that a publisher would see it as financially viable to produce.
Like others have said, I have started with loose leaf booklets, as the content is still changing, but I have turned one section into a bound booklet as I think (and hope) I have it correct.
Trish
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Hi Liz and Trish,
Thanks very much for those two further useful contributions - I feel I have a nice balanced view on the whole subject at present. Now, where's that Easter Egg I'd got my greedy eyes on yesterday...?
keith
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Hi Keith,
two RootsChat threads, with more on this topic:
BOOK: ... Writing your Family History (http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=45249.new#new)
and
Presentation (http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,12461.0.html)
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Just my 5 cents worth!
Recently I did a project for a friend's 70th birthday - a book "This is Your Life" (how cheeky of me) which covered from this gent's baby photos, through his career and business dealings and special family milestones.
In the back jacket I fixed a CD with the still photos made into an iMovie, using the Ken Burns effect judiciously and some nice transitions - complete with captions and edited music. All of his children received the book with CD, and the movie was played at a family dinner.
This idea could be adapted for a family history project - you could have (a) CD of photo scans and .ged file if so inclined (b) movie of your work including some narrative of how you started and some of the hurdles etc. It could be fun.
A few of my Mac User group are doing an excellent job of layout of their family history stuff with new Apple program Pages (part of the iWork package). Some of them have said they were spurred on seeing my show-and-tell of the "birthday" project.
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Thanks for that, Glenidol!
Haven't plumbed the mystery of gedcoms yet, particularly for Macs, but as a Mac user I am not gifted at layout and am delighted to hear of that program you mentioned!
I will investigate buying it.
Marie
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Ten years ago I did a book for my brother, documenting his wartime experiences. I saved this in zipped form on a floppy disk, and on a zipdrive.
I would like to open this on my new "high spec, v expensive Pc". Guess what? No disc drive! The zip drive has died with click of death syndrome. However I have a ring binder with a printed copy and I kept my old PC with a disk drive, so I can still get to it.
The point of this rambling is, that in ten years time the CD format is bound to have changed, floppy disks will have disappeared, what next pulsar-laser- multi-colour-atmosphere-memory?
Please print a copy, its expensive, but it is permanent. If you lose your electronic copy (as one does) there should always be a way of scanning documents in the future.
Oh yes, in a hundred years time your book will be an historic record of great value to your descendants as they search Rootschat "2100" for their ancestors, namely you!
Deja vue anybody?
Mike
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The hybrid approach outlined by "glenidol" for her friend's birthday, combining several kinds of documents (text, photos and video), could be used to present results of everyday family-history research.
With free webspace becoming more and more readily available, we can think about storing high-resolution photos (capable of being transformed into images on paper) in this way. But we must not forget that only people with rapid Internet access and an excellent printer will be able to take advantage of such photos. A friend of mine has helped me do this (since I'm stuck with old-fashioned Internet access) for a few personal portraits at the following Flash site:
http://grafton.nsw.free.fr/portraits
A common challenge when using old photos is to call upon other researchers in an attempt to identify individuals. Here again, a website can prove useful, since it lets you enlarge parts of the photo, to help in the identification process. Here's an example of a Flash site of this kind:
http://grafton.nsw.free.fr/atalanta
(I hope I'm using tags correctly in this message. If not, please forgive me. I would have egg on my face if I made a blunder that displayed the entire RootsChat forum in green italics!)
William
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Using photos on the web you need to optimize them - people get impatient with waiting for things to load.
I like these two web Photo gallery programs - I have used both successfully.
Galerie (Mac)
http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/galerie.htm
and JAlbum -
http://jalbum.net/
Jude
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people get impatient with waiting for things to load.
Too true !!
Rather than repeat myself here, if you are doing it by hand, then check out this topic
TIP: Adding images (and 'thumbnails') to web-sites
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,47486.0.html
I've also included some thoughts on images and "jerky" web pages there
Bob
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Database error came up on that link --
says -
Database Error
Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator.
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Marie said:
Haven't plumbed the mystery of gedcoms yet, particularly for Macs...
The first time I received a big mysterious gedcom file from a friend, I could make neither head nor tail of it, literally, since I couldn't figure out where it started and where it ended. Fortunately, that initial state of confusion didn't last for long, and I now think of gedcoms as the greatest invention since sliced bread. They're so light-weight that you can attach them to emails in the hope that your receiver will know how to handle them, which is unfortunately not always the case.
Macintosh users have the advantage of being able to get totally involved in the gedcom phenomenon by means of the extraordinarily well-developed GEDitCOM tool, which actually uses the gedcom format for its internal data structures. What I am saying about GEDitCOM might look like a shameless plug, but I truly have no contacts of any kind with the brilliant fellow from Utah, if I remember correctly) who built this software, Having worked on Macs ever since 1984 (and written a book on this subject), I've rarely seen a simple product, in any domain whatsoever, of such high quality from a user-friendliness viewpoint. You can actually exploit GEDitCOM to test the validity of gedcom files exported by other tools, from non-Mac platforms.
These remarks might prove useful to Marie and others, but I do not wish to start any kind of war about genealogy tools.
William
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Database error came up on that link --
says -
Database Error
Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator.
Just tried it, it worked fine !!
I think the server had hiccups just now, I couldn't get back on site for a while, maybe it was something to do with that.
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Mike speaks of
click of death syndrome
Yes, this is one of the most frequent mortal afflictions you discover, along with relatively mild things such as plagues, when browsing through transcriptions of the UK census that appear to have been produced by Bombay typists. :(
I agree with Mike that paper has a good future in front of it. That's why I prefer to use the Internet as a vector for distributing family-history stuff in a form that can be printed out on paper rather than simply looked at on the screen. Here's an example of this approach, based upon the use of Flash and downloadable PDF files, which I'm working on at present:
http://grafton.nsw.free.fr/mother
This kind of website is not very sexy to see on the screen, because it doesn't tell you anything at all, but it provides you with a lot of nice stuff to download, print out and read in bed. And that, to my way of thinking, is a better place to delve into genealogy than in front of a computer screen.
William
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My Mac group has been running workshops on phpGedView -- jointly using it as a genealogy program on our HDs and using it to manage files up on the web. I'm getting there. I've put a file up on rootschat.net but having difficulty turning the MySQL bit on. But I'll get there. http://www.phpgedview.net
The question of the longevity of protection of genealogy files has surfaced many times in discussions at my Mac User group. Everyone seems to go the way of printing hard copy as well as saving to CD/DVD. Also the people who have been researching the longest take extra precautions like keeping a copy at their bank, parking copies for safe keeping with other relatives, one chap keeps a copy in a big safe at his work premises. One person had a relative minding a copy and their house burnt down. It boils down to planning I guess and trying to forsee all catastrophies.
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William/Gamone
How does a very untechnological Mac user find out about this GEDitCOM, please!
I am truly delighted to see a couple of Mac people on this thread, most things revolve round PCs and that of course is useless to me!
Marie
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I have been using Reunion http://www.leisterpro.com/which I quite like - though I have got quite cross they don't supply an upgrade to local agents in Australia after 6 months -- so its a matter of sending money off the US - I'm one of those not willing to put plastic on the net.
If you're in freebie mode .....PhpGedView is a freebie of course - though there is a little fiddling to get it running on your Mac HD as regular genealogy program - you have to switch web sharing on as though you were running a server
Looks like you have to buy GeditCom .....http://www.geditcom.com/
Jude
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Thanks, Jude, from another Aussie!
(but one with minimal technological competence!)
Have had a look at those sites you gave. I have been hearing about Reunion for awhile, and think that might be the way to go. It seems to do lots of things, and to be not too difficult to use. I'll save up and buy it!
Marie
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I think the most interesting element of family history is recording the stories of our ancestors, stories of hardship overcome, bravery, travel and achievement. Not only does this add considerable colour to a family tree, but the stories can be handed down through the generations.
I've written a guide on writing your family history book which I publish for free on www.myfamilyhistorybook.co.uk for anyone who's interested in seeing their family history in print :)