How do I publish a genealogy book?

Once I’ve gotten to a stopping point on my research, I’d like to create a nice book that I can share with my family (or even offer for sale on my website for other researchers). Who do I give my research to to create this book?

In most good genealogy programs – Roots Magic, for instance – you select a person, then run a report called “Ancestors of”, clicking the boxes to include notes, sources, index, etc. You direct the output to an RTF file instead of the printer.

Many people do four books, one for each grandparent. That way you can give the children of your maternal grandfather’s brother just the data they are interested in.

Once you have the four RTF files, you open them with Word, pretty them up, adjust the margins, create the index and so on.

Then you either upload them to lulu.com or send them to a copy shop. (Kinko’s is my choice there, but they are not nation-wide yet.) Lulu will run off one copy at a time on demand, with a hard cover or soft.

Kinko’s has a range of bindings and covers; the spiral comb is popular. (It is a plastic tube with 24 teeth that go through rectangular holes; same effect as a 3-ring binder, VERY hard to describe with words, everyone has seen them, I hope you know what I mean.)

If your books run over 50 pages or so it would not be unreasonable to ask your cousins, nieces etc. to pay for the copying and postage charges, if they are interested. This helps you and keeps them from all asking for one, then forgetting to even open it, which would happen if you gave them away for free.

By “Other researchers”, I expect you mean distant relatives. Unless your book is full of research tips or has a great deal of history about a certain area, people who are not related aren’t going to be interested. (Unless, you traced all of Elvis’s love children by his groupies and the alien who abducted him.)

Roots Magic V. 3 has another option – you can burn a CD, with pictures, and a read-only version of the software. This lets anyone who has it explore the family tree any way they want to.

FTM lets you “print” to a file too, but it is harder.

Robert Gillis TV appearance: Publishing “Nana” book – 01/12

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