Publish
Your Family
History
GENEALOGIST’S REFERENCE SHELF
Publish
Your Family
History
Preserving Your Heritage in a Book
SUSAN YATES AND GREG IOANNOU
Copyright © Susan Yates and Greg Ioannou, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press and the Ontario Genealogical Society. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editors: Heather Ball, Andrea Battiston, Jennie Worden
Printer: Webcom
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Yates, Susan
Publish your family history : preserving your heritage in a book / by Susan Yates and Greg Ioannou.
(Genealogist’s Reference Shelf)
Co-published by the Ontario Genealogical Society.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-55488-727-9
1. Genealogical literature--Publishing. 2. Self-publishing. 3. Book design. I. Ioannou, Greg, 1953-
II. Ontario Genealogical Society III. Title.
Z285.5.Y38 2010 070.5’93 C2009-907465-6
1 2 3 4 5 14 13 12 11 10
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Ontario Genealogical Society
Suite 102, 40 Orchard View Boulevard
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4R 1B9
tel. (416) 489-0734 fax. (416) 489-9803
[email protected] www.ogs.on.ca
| Dundurn Press 3 Church Street, Suite 500 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1M2 | Gazelle Book Services Limited White Cross Mills High Town, Lancaster, England LA1 4XS | Dundurn Press 2250 Military Road Tonawanda, NY U.S.A. 14150 |
CONTENTS
5 To Design a Book
6 Writing and Designing a Cover That Works
7 Getting Ready to Print
8 Made by Hand
9 The Technological Printing Solution
10 Offset Printing: Going to Press
11 Distribution
Appendix
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all the people who helped pull this book together: Ruth Chernia at the Ontario Genealogical Society (who came up with the idea and has fostered the project throughout), and the following people at Colborne Communications: Heather Ball, Andrea Battiston, Rachel Rosen and Jennie Worden.
Susan Yates
Greg Ioannou
Researching family history is, for most of us, a labour of love. You are exploring your own background and the backgrounds of the people who mean the most to you. Many people reach a point where they want to share what they have found with their loved ones.The traditional way to do so is to put it all into the form of a book.
The whole notion of preparing a book is daunting. For one thing, books are long. Just writing a book is usually a huge undertaking.(We can tell you that with confidence.This is, after all, only the second paragraph of this book—we know we have a l-o-n-g way to go!) With a family history, even when you’ve finished writing, you are faced with what can seem like an insurmountable group of tasks that you likely know little about: editing, design, typesetting, printing, binding, distribution.
Most people who want to publish a book follow a pretty traditional route: They write the manuscript and send it to agents or publishers, who send it straight back. It is an easy, if depressing,way to accumulate a fine collection of rejection letters. Perhaps luckily, that route isn’t open to the writers of family histories. Few traditional publishers will consider publishing them, unless perhaps you are related to the Kennedys or Churchills.
There is another way, however, one that is open to more and more people, particularly because new technologies are making it cheaper and easier: publishing it yourself.This book explores the various ways of doing just that.We can help you publish your book, whether it is intended for a handful of close relatives or for a wider audience.
This book is designed for people who want to do it themselves, especially those whose publishing projects are on a small scale. Rather than using the term “self-publishing,” which has connotations of “no one wanted to publish the thing so I just did it myself,” we’ve used “home publishing,” to reflect the fact that most publishing projects outside of the mainstream book publishing industry are small-scale labours of love.
Your book can be handmade or professionally bound, can be handwritten or elaborately typeset.You can tailor the look—and the cost—to your particular needs and the needs of your readers. This book will lead you through the various options.
WHY DO YOU WANT TO
PUBLISH A BOOK?
First things first. Even though you aren’t going to be taking your family history to a traditional publisher, there is still a lot you can learn from how publishers operate. Let’s ask some of