So you want to publish your family history, but think you can’t do it yourself, and the costs are too high to produce the few copies needed?   In reality, it may be easy enough to accomplish the task, and a relatively new technology called Print On Demand (POD) has made it economical to produce as few books as desired. Five steps must be taken to publish a family history:

1.  Edit the Manuscript

Even if you won first prize in a competition for the best essay ever written, enlist an independent person to edit the text. That person should check it for readability and grammar. What may be understandable to you—because you know the story—may not be understandable to another person. From constant reading and rereading of the manuscript, blind spots develop that may obscure errors.

The text should have a style. Style means nothing more than being consistent in how the material is presented. Will the text refer to the “19th century” or the “nineteenth century”? It does not matter which is chosen. What matters is that it is consistent throughout the book. To do a perfect job, get a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style. Its 700-plus pages are considered the standard in the industry.

Here are some suggestions that will help avoid some of the most common weaknesses found in articles we receive:

• Avoid long, run-on sentences.
• Avoid long paragraphs. They should be no more than 15 lines in the final book.
• Avoid parenthetical expressions (if you know what I mean).
• Do not underline, bold face, or italicize words to emphasize a point; they really are unnecessary.
• Do not overuse words that are placed in quotes, because they are meant to connote a special sense. They really “bother” many readers.
• Italicize words not in the English language (that is, the language of the book). Translate non-English words placing the translation in parentheses immediately after the word. Your father went to shul every Saturday, but do not assume the reader is familiar with shul (synagogue). If many non-English words are used, consider presenting a glossary in the back of the book instead of translating all the words throughout the text.
• Avoid using contractions such as don’t, they’re, it’s. Instead say “do not,” “they are,” and “it is.”
• Decades do not have an apostrophe: not 1930’s, but 1930s.
• Italicize book titles or magazine names. Place quotation marks around titles of articles within a magazine.
• People emigrate from a country and immigrate to a country.
• It is proper to use an en dash between a range of numbers, not a hyphen: 1920–1943, not 1920-1943.
• One space between sentences, not two spaces.
• Use a serif font. Times Roman will do. Experiment with the fonts in your collection. Do not use a sans serif font like Arial. The human eye/brain has been trained to read serif fonts.
• Punctuation almost always goes inside quotes except for semicolons and colons. It may look funny, but it is the standard. Example:

2.  Design the Book

The manuscript is complete and is ready to be put into book form. This is probably the easiest of the steps. Go to your book collection and look at how professionals formatted books. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Note the treatment of headers and footers—the lines above and/or below the text that include the page number, book title, and sometimes a chapter title. Note type sizes and book sizes. Try to create a book of no fewer than 100 pages (about a quarter-inch thick). If there is insufficient text, consider decreasing the dimensions of the book. Note the sequence of the title page, verso (copyright) page, dedication, table of contents, foreword (note the spelling of foreword), preface, acknowledgements, introduction, chapters, glossary, bibliography, and index. Use The Chicago Manual of Style for proper treatment of footnotes, endnotes, and indention of direct quotes.

Once it is determined which book(s) to mimic, select software with which to compose the book. Fancy software such as PageMaker or InDesign is not a requirement. A word processor such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect will do. Every book published in print by Avotaynu has been composed by this author either in Word or, in the earlier days, WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.

A better knowledge of the word processor than that necessary to compose a letter is required. Look at the book you plan to mimic. Do you have sufficient knowledge of the word processor software to reproduce the book? Do you come close to a sufficient knowledge of your word processor software to reproduce the book? If not, perhaps you ought to look for someone else to do the work.

Use the Styles feature heavily. Once you decide on the format to be used for chapter headings, subchapter headings, indention, and illustration captions, set up styles for each feature. This serves a multitude of purposes. First, it assures that all representations of a given feature, such as subheadings, look the same. Second, it is easier to use a style rather than set up all the attributes of the feature each time you use it. For example, if you decide to indent all paragraphs that are direct quotes by a quarter inch and use 9-point italics type, it is unnecessary to set up these requirements for every direct quote. Instead, create a style once called “Direct Quote” and invoke it every time the feature is needed. Finally, if you decide to change the specifications of the feature, the word processor will automatically adjust all occurrences of the style merely by correcting the style itself. For example, if you initially set the body of the text in 10-point type and decide it would look better in 11-point, creating a style called “Body” allows you to change the text size by merely changing the style.

3.  Create the Cover

If you would like to create a book whose quality reflects the amount of effort put into it, engage a professional to design the cover. The software used for book design is usually very sophisticated. Quark or InDesign seems to be the software of choice by professionals. If you do not know someone who can design a book cover (and spine and back cover), which is likely, try to find someone who will recommend a person. I do not suggest shopping the Internet or Yellow Pages. You should pay no more than $200–300 for the cover. Share with the designer your ideas about elements that should appear on the cover, and then let the designer’s creativity take it from there.

4.  Secure an ISBN, Bar Code, Catalogue Number and Copyright

 ISBN. Your book should have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) unless the plan is to distribute it only to family. If copies will be donated to libraries or there are plans to market the book, an ISBN is mandatory, because that is the way of identifying books throughout the world.   Information including costs can be found at www.isbn-us.com. The cost for a single ISBN and barcode in the United States is under $100.

 Bar code. If you get an ISBN, add a bar code on the back cover of the book. Libraries may use the bar code as a shortcut to cataloguing their new acquisitions or to check out books to patrons. A bar code can be obtained from the same vendor as the ISBN.

Cataloguing. The book should have a U.S. Library of Congress catalog number. This is done in advance of publication and appears on the copyright page—which is the page that follows the title page. Request one from the Library of Congress. There is no charge to get a number.

Copyright. As the author of the creation, you are the copyright owner of the book. It is recommended that the copyright be registered, but it is not an absolute requirement. The U.S. Library of Congress offers a number of options for filing a copyright. They have an “Electronic Copyright Office” that will require at least a half hour to set up and is designed primarily for large publishing companies. I do not recommend it unless you plan to publish many works. An alternative is their online registration with fill-in form, and another is the old-fashioned way of using a paper form. The links to all three processes start at www.copyright.gov. I recommend online form registration. It requires that you send two copies of the completed work with $45 to the Library of Congress. It will take you about 15 minutes to fill out the form.

5.  Print the Book

The final step is to get the book printed. A number of companies offer the new technology called Print On Demand (POD). Avotaynu uses LightningSource.com. It is as good as any, and their prices are reasonable. Set up an online account and submit both the text and cover as PDF files. Do not request a proof copy. Once Lightning Source indicates the book is ready for production, order one copy. Strangely, it is cheaper than ordering a proof from the company. If the book meets your satisfaction, order as many copies as needed. A major advantage of this POD technology is that you only have to order as many copies as needed. If you erroneously order too few, just order additional copies, even as few as one. The total penalty for guessing the quantity incorrectly on the initial order is a $1.50 handling charge plus shipping costs for the second run.

Conclusion

Self publishing, especially a family history, can be very rewarding.. It is a historical record of all the years of work that you can share with your family. When placed in libraries, you are contributing to the overall field of family history research by sharing your information with other historians.

Updated March 25, 2015; Originally published Winter 2011