Compiling a family history book

[artygirl]

Well,

I've been researching for a few years now and I'm keen to self-publish an initial volume of my ancestral discoveries in August/September. Have any of you done this or seen any examples of nicely presented histories?

I'd like to make it a pretty little booklet and would love to see how other people have handled the design of the layout of their writing! 

[little meg]

Hi artygirl,
My sister and I worked on a book together, we self-published.
We were covering one of our lines, Wild family, but focused on one of them, Thomas Wild, as he came to Australia and is our main ancestor here.

So, what we did was, apart from the standard: contents, acknowledgements, introduction page etc. divide it into sections.
Part 1 - English Ancestry
Part 2 - Emigration and colonization
Part 3 - Descendants

Then at the end, source, bibliography and Index.
We included maps, photos (they add on the cost but cheaper if grouped together), family charts etc.

attached is the cover of our book, I did a pastel painting, which showed a portrait of Thomas, with the background of the Murray River where they had settled (think of the movie all the Rivers Run  )

I am now planning my next one, in a totally different approach, more complex, but having a lot of fun thinking about the cover

Margaret

[Joyful]

What a great cover Meg .....you are very very talented

Joy - (who does not have an artistic bone in her body!!)

[little meg]

Thanks Joy, we were actually going to go with a plain cover, black ink on coloured board, as it was cheaper.
But I convinced my sister to go with this one, saying I will pay the extra cost, and so it was agreed

We had sent out flyers to family members with a cut out section for them to fill in, how many books at X amount of cost, including postage.
So we knew roughly how many we had to print.
Had to apply for ISBN and donate one to National Library of Australia and one to the State library where we live.   So much Who Ha.

Margaret

[toni*]

have you seen photobooks ?
there re several topics on here about them
here is one (you can find the others by entering photobook int he search bar of RC)
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,334624.0.html

[little meg]

that looks interesting, toni, might look into that. 
I am sure artygirl will love it.

Margaret

[matt94]

Hi,

I am currenty compiling a Memorial Bookwith Blurb, which is a slightly cheaper version than the Jessop Photobooks. For a 400 page novel to be self-published, it costs £7.50 on black and white paper. For a 40 page 7"x7" book it costs £6.50. I am choosing this option. I recommend Blurb... check out their pricing and book options:

http://www.blurb.com/book/pricing

If you really want a unique stamp on your book then download free fonts from various websites (google it!).

Good Luck!
Matt

[little meg]

The photobooks  and memory books are a great idea, but if you are looking at mass production it could work out expensive.

I had 150 books printed back in 1997 through a printing company.  I would be looking at the same amount or even more this time.

Margaret

[artygirl]

What a wonderful book example! Very well done! I'm sorry for not replying for so long, I didn't notice I had replies. Thank you all.

I'm very close to the printing stage now, looking into more ways of printing it out. Thank you all again for your input!