Читать книгу Publish Your Family History - Susan Yates - Страница 7
ОглавлениеResearching 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 the questions that publishers would ask of your manuscript. They are questions that need to be asked of any publishing project.
What Are You Trying to Communicate?
Many publishing projects don’t really work because they have no central idea. Until that central idea has been thought through clearly, there is no point even starting to write the book. Many publishing projects should be shot down before they start, because the writer has no particular reason (other than ego gratification) for writing the book.
That applies to family histories too. Family histories range all the way from very dry family trees with little or no text to raunchy “all the family dirt you were scared to ask about” exposés. (One of the authors of this book has an aunt who, in her eighties, wrote a family history in which she was very explicit about exactly what she thought of various members of the family, and “set the record straight” about various events in the family’s history. It makes wonderful reading—for some family members, anyway.)
A book with a weak central idea can often be improved by recasting that idea. For example, imagine that you have spent a lot of time researching your family tree and gathering documents related to your family’s history.You decide to gather all of your research together to preserve it for the rest of the family.Your plan is to print out the family tree, then copies of all the documents sorted by type of document, and put it all into three-ring binders and give the binders to the members of your family.
Your family members’ eyes have always glazed over when you’ve shown them parts of the family tree, and have shown little interest in helping with your research. How likely are they to ever make any use of the binders?
The only way you have ever been able to get the family interested in your research is by telling them anecdotes about obscure relatives, like the time cousin Eustace woke up convinced he’d inherited the Taj Mahal, and immediately left for India to claim his inheritance. That pretty much tells you what you have to do to prepare a family history that will preserve your research and that the family will treasure: combine the research with whatever you’ve been able to find out about the life stories of the people in your family.
Who Are You Trying to Reach?
There are various potential audiences for your book.The most obvious audience is your family. That doesn’t mean just your immediate family: in theory, virtually every (living) person mentioned in your book will have some interest in it. Some other audiences:
• genealogical societies in the areas where branches of your family live
• local history societies in those same areas
• public libraries in places where there are lots of members of your family
• genealogists working on families that somewhat overlap with yours
What Interests Those Audiences?
Many family histories are really just reprinted research notes or family trees.The best ones go far beyond that.The writers have tried to bring the family’s history to life in a way that will really reach the readers.
The best way to do this is to try as much as possible to tell the various stories you have uncovered about the people in the family.Where did people live? Why did they move there? What was the place like? What did they do for a living? What were their lives like? How did they live, relax, work, worship, die? How did they fit into their community?
Think how novelists bring their characters and their stories to life. Look at the detail a good novelist will provide on the people, the settings they lived in, the things they did.You have an advantage over a novelist: you are describing real people, and you have documentary evidence of what they were like.
Feel free to include the most interesting bits of that evidence: maps, photos of people and places, newspaper clippings, letters—anything that helps bring the people to life.Try to vary the things you reproduce. Photos of people are great, but it gets a bit boring if all you show are formal wedding photos.
Think of how to organize the book so that it flows for a reader. Some family histories organize their material by town. Some, by who the people are descended from. Some, by looking at key people in the family’s story.
Put yourself in the position of each person in the book who is likely to read it. How is your cousin Lucretia going to feel when you spend three pages telling her brother Nigel’s story, then say,“Nigel also had a sister called Lucretia”? Many writers, sad to say, focus closely on the husbands they describe and then dismiss the wives with a quick mention.
Remember also that people in the future will be using your book as a resource as they research other family histories.You should try to tell your family’s stories—but you are also reporting your research findings, and they should be as accurate and complete as you can make them.
Is a Book the Right Vehicle?
Books have enormous strengths and terrible weaknesses. You should ask yourself whether some other medium might be more appropriate. Do you have enough material for a book? Is a book the right format to get that material into your readers’ hands?
| Books’ Strengths | Books’ Weaknesses |
| • durable—can last for centuries | • difficult to update and revise |
| • inexpensive if printed in sufficient quantities | • can be expensive in small quantities |
| • portable | • heavy and bulky in quantity |
| • impressive if designed and edited well | • mortifying if poorly done |
| • long—enough space to thoroughly explore an idea or topic | • long—can seem endless if the idea or topic was more suited to a magazine article |
For a family history, the first item in these lists usually trumps everything else: books are durable.They can be handed from generation to generation as treasured heirlooms in a way that no other available medium can.
Is the Internet an Alternative?
So, what about the Internet as a technological solution? Well, the point about publishing in cyberspace is that it doesn’t give you a book of your own.A virtual book lacks the physical presence that real paper, ink and binding delivers.
However, the Internet can provide a perfect solution for some.You can make your family history available to your family, wherever they may be, at no cost to them. And you can make the history into a living document so that your relatives can update the information.
There are several ways to publish your material on the Internet. For any of them, you’ll need to get some web space, and a web address, from your Internet provider. Almost all Internet accounts come with some space and addresses included. Your options include:
A PDF file: PDF is a file format that allows people to view and print your document the way you intended it to look. When preparing a PDF, you design the pages as you would design book pages. (See Chapter 5 for ideas on page design.) Once the book has been laid out, you use PDF software to convert the file to a PDF.With the PDF file, you in effect upload the book, in book format, to the Internet and just let people download it and print out their own sets of pages. Be sure when creating the PDF that you embed the required fonts, so that it will look the way you intended when people view and print it. An Internet search on “PDF software” will guide you to the latest software for creating PDFs.
An RTF document: Like a PDF, an RTF (Rich Text Format) document will allow any user to download and read your family history. It doesn’t allow for fancy formatting or graphics, but it creates small files, and almost any program on almost any computer system will be able to read it.
A traditional website:There are many software programs that you can use to design and upload your site.Writing for the web is very different than writing a book. In many ways, it is ideal for a family history.You can organize the site like a family tree, and have the user click on each person in the tree for more details—perhaps a bio and some images.You can incorporate search features into the site to help the user find a specific family member or find relatives from a certain place or era.
When you’re creating a website, pay close attention to how you structure your information. It does no good to have pages and pages of text (or worse—one page crammed with too much information and no paragraph breaks!) if you don’t give your reader a quick and easy way to find what he or she is looking for. Break your information into short chunks and organize it into logical categories. For example, if one branch of your family immigrated to Canada and another stayed in Tanzania, it might make sense to use geography to organize the site. If your research dates back to the 15th century, you could structure your information in chronological order.
A good principle is that a user should never have to visit more than three pages after the home page of a site to get the information that he or she wants. After more than that, the reader tends to lose interest or get frustrated.
A wiki:A “wiki” is a type of online document that is collectively created and maintained.Anyone can edit it, even someone with no knowledge of HTML.The design is kept as simple and easy-to-use as possible.The wiki format can also work well, particularly if your relatives want to participate in keeping the information up-to-date. This means that if Aunt Edna unexpectedly discovers a shoebox in the attic full of the letters great-uncle James wrote during World War II, she can add that content to the family history without sending it to you first.
Who Will Want the Book?
Because you are publishing the book yourself, you aren’t constrained by the need to sell a huge number of copies, but you do need to think through how many copies you are likely to distribute, who you want to have the book and how to reach that readership. Chapter 11 looks at these questions.
Can You Write?
You’re probably the wrong person to ask. Many wonderful writers are too aware of their shortcomings, and many awful writers are unaware that they have any shortcomings.
But the writing quality of the original manuscript is a factor in any publishing project.You probably should budget for some editing help, even if you’re a good writer.
How Risky is It?
The classic failed home-publishing venture costs far more than the publisher expected. Often the net result is a thinner bank account and a basement full of books.We’ll try to lead you to ways to save money and keep a lid on costs. Many home-publishing ventures bring in only a small fraction of the publisher’s most pessimistic income projection. Uncle Ignatz may never come through with the $5,000 contribution to the costs that he keeps promising.To be safe, when you calculate your projected revenues, assume the worst—and be honest with yourself.Then, when you are doing a final budget, use half of that worst-case income projection. If the project is still affordable, go ahead!
So Why Would Anyone of Sound Mind Consider Home Publishing?
The traditional publishers will pay you for your manuscript and promote it professionally. Do it yourself and you get all of the costs and potentially huge hassles.Why bother? For all sorts of good reasons.
Control.Talk to many writers, and they’ll tell you: “People thought my book was a Harlequin with that cover they put on it”; “Why did they change the name of my family history to Attack of the Aardvark Lizards?”; and “The page design is so confusing I can’t even find the page numbers.”
Low overhead and lower break-even point. Many perfectly wonderful home-publishing projects just aren’t financially viable for book publishing firms.A family history that will sell only 200 copies will not appeal to even the smallest small press (unless it came with a grant of some sort to publish it), but can make a worthwhile home-publishing venture, because the home publisher doesn’t have to carry all of the overhead of trying to produce and distribute a full list of books. Printing 200 copies of that family history book and distributing them to the members of the clan can make considerable financial sense.
Flexibility.Want to produce a book that can be printed in tiny quantities on archival-quality paper with lots of photos? Traditional publishing doesn’t want to know you exist.
Creativity.Want your book to have a hand-embossed cover, handmade paper pages, and a creatively stitched binding? You may well have the time available to invest in producing such a labour of love. Sometimes you are the only person who can give a project the love and care it deserves.
Publish it yourself and it will come out the way you wanted it to (give or take your own abilities and budget, and if the printers are willing!).
