My family history book is finished, and I have some thoughts.
In 2023, I purchased a spiral notebook meant for college students, and began writing a story about my parents. I started the project because I found love letters written back and forth from my parents during his senior year of college at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University). They wrote every day from September to December of 1954. I had never seen these letters and finding them after they were gone was like meeting two new people. I had to know more about the history of these two people—my parents. I wanted to dive deeper into their lives before they adopted me in 1965 and better understand where and who they had come from.
I finished the manuscript last June, after seven months of writing, researching, and gathering all the content for the appendices. My husband read it and suggested edits, and after making (some) of the edits, I uploaded it to Vellum, where I designed the interior to create a print PDF for uploading to a printer (I used Lulu.com). I used an old photo of my parents to create the cover in Canva (and all my graphic designer friends are banging their heads against the wall about now).
As a side note, three years ago, I started a company called Storia that publishes books for Indie authors. We have editors and a graphic designer who designs the books’ interiors and covers. Because I want to encourage people who choose to do it themselves, from start to finish, I decided to produce the book myself. I don’t recommend this for everyone, but if you want to DIY your family history book, it is possible.
I decided to publish my book in hardback only because the idea is that the book is handed down, and we all know that paperbacks don’t always hold up well for the long haul. Based on my gift list, which included 30 people, I ordered a small batch of books and delivered them during the month of December. The books were of good quality (thank you, Lulu.com!), and I was proud to give them as gifts.
Now, here’s the downside to this project: It’s not easy and it takes time. These are not always my favorite type of projects, and there are days when I look at my book and am surprised that I crossed the finish line with this one. A friend who is not a writer decided to do a family cookbook as her family history book. Each recipe will include a short story about who the recipe originated with and family photos. Another friend recorded her father telling his life story, and added to the content from a journal she had given him several years earlier. The book is basically a transcription of his oral storytelling. I love it because it sounds just like his voice.
There are so many ways to do a family history book. Here are two more options:
Old photos in somewhat chronological order that tell the story of your family. This loose structure would be more like a photo book with long captions.
“Mixed media” book with images from the pages of yearbooks, scrapbooks, letters, family memorabilia—anything that helps tell the story of your family. This one also lends itself to less written content.
After I gave Kinfolk to our three kids, my middle daughter told me that when we are gone from this earth, what will mean the most to her is to have something that captures our voices. I thought about this, and decided to record a Kinfolk audiobook for my kids. Since this doesn’t need to be professional quality, I plan on using either my iPhone or laptop. I do want it to sound as clean and crisp as possible, so I’m going to cloister myself in our backhouse closet and record myself reading the book using Garage Band, an app pre-installed on my Apple devices, which will make it easier to edit the file—fingers crossed. I won’t upload it to a distributor, but I plan to give it to my kids on a USB drive. I will also upload it somewhere in the cloud.
I’m making this sound so easy, and I know it won’t be, so I’ll post an update on whether I recommend this process.
I’m not sure how many of my family members will read my book in its entirety, and that’s okay. I handed everyone a book with the disclaimer: “There will not be a family book club to discuss this and I don’t expect you to give me a book review. You don’t have to read the book. I just wanted you to have it.” I think this is important to say, especially if you are writing something with more than 20,000 words. Not everyone likes to read, even if it’s a subject that interests them, so let them off the hook. I was sincere in telling them that I just wanted them to have the book. It’s a gift, not an assignment.
I hope you will start your own family history book project. If you want more information about how to DIY your book, I’m happy to send you details about every step of my process, along with what I learned that would make it easier next time. And I would love to hear your creative ideas for family history books. I’ve finished mine, but I’m still trying to convince a few other friends to get started on theirs. They aren’t writers, so opening a Word document to start a long manuscript won’t happen. But somewhere in their possession—or in their parents’, siblings’, aunts’, uncles’, cousins’—there are documents and memorabilia that tell a story. Yours, too.
Now, enjoy this old photo of my paternal grandmother, Pearl. She shared hours of stories with me about our family as we sat on the guest bed in her house in Van Buren, Arkansas, going through a hatbox filled with her old family photos.
Happy Creating!
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