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244 pages

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If you have stories to share with your family, whether you have been researching a short time or a long time, this book will: * take you through the four stages of publishing projects * show you how publishing works * help you pick a project to publish * lead you through a research review to see what you have and what you still need to tell the stories in a compelling way * give you the skills to become a good storyteller * lead you through the process of editing * instruct you howto prepare your manuscript to look like it was professionally published and * help you spread the word that you have a book available Everything you need to write and publish your family history.

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	15 mars 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622878253
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Publish Your Family History:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing
the Stories of Your Ancestors

by Dina C. Carson

I ron G ate P ublishing
Niwot, CO
Publish Your Family History:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing
The Stories of Your Ancestors
Copyright ©2015 Dina C. Carson

ISBN 978-1622-878-25-3 EBOOK

January 2015

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
We who write about the past were not there.
We can never be certain that we have recaptured it
as it really was. But the least we can do is
stay within the evidence. ...
The trick is selecting the right, true, details,
and using them in the right place.
—Barbara Tuchman
Practicing History: Selected Essays
Consider the possibility that
you may be an excellent writer
who simply needs to sit down and write.
—Mary Embree
The Author’s Toolkit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing and Publishing Your Work
Contents

Preface
Introduction
Section 1
Chapter 1: Who Needs This Book?
Chapter 2: Publishing Projects
Chapter 3: Pick a Project to Publish
Chapter 4: How Publishing Works
Chapter 5: The Right Tool for the Right Job
Section 2
Chapter 6: Identifying Your Target Market
Chapter 7: Conducting a Research Review
Chapter 8: Scanning and Optical Character Recognition
Chapter 9: Developing a New Research Plan
Chapter 10: Writer’s Block: Staring Down a Blank Page
Chapter 11: Drafting a Preliminary Outline
Section 3
Chapter 12: Becoming a Storyteller
Chapter 13: Creating Your Own Style Guide
Chapter 14: Writing a First Draft
Chapter 15: Editing Your Manuscript
Section 4
Chapter 16: Creating a Page Layout
Chapter 17: Typesetting—The Basics
Chapter 18: Typesetting the Front Matter
Chapter 19: Typesetting the Body
Chapter 20: Typesetting the Back Matter
Chapter 21: Designing the Cover
Chapter 22: Preparing the Final Files
Section 5
Chapter 23: Creating a Marketing Plan
Chapter 24: Reaching Your Audience
Chapter 25: Generating Publicity
Chapter 26: Expanding Your Audience
Chapter 27: Selling Online
Conclusion
About the Author
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Updates
Bibliography
Research
Writing
Examples
Production
Marketing
Preface

The question I get most often when I lecture on the topic of writing and publishing a family history, is “How did you go about it when you wrote your first book?”
In the preparation for writing my own family history, one thing I found frustrating was that there were so many authors or instructors who told me what should be done, but very few who told me how it should be done, and done well. A lot of that, I had to figure out on my own.
I had to determine whether I could borrow from fiction, memoir writing or creative non-fiction. If so, just how much? Or, must I stay within the rules of non-fiction and write like an historian, although historical fiction could hold some lessons? If there is a line we cannot cross as genealogists and family historians, where is it? And how close can we come to it?
To answer my own questions, I started with a well-researched register-style genealogy. I am confident that book will be of use to the next generation of researchers, but I also wanted to leave behind a family history my non-genealogical relatives would read. So, I wrote a narrative family history. Then I re-wrote it. And I re-wrote it again. Each time experimenting with how to entice the best stories to come out.
I sought out professional writing assistance, and I have had the pleasure of learning from the best. I studied genealogical writing with Tom Jones during his “ Writing and Publishing for Genealogists” course at the Institute for Genealogical and Historical Research (IGHR) held at Samford University, and John Colletta’s “ Producing a Quality Family Narrative” course at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG). I am not going to give away their secrets here. It is well worth attending these Institutes yourself.
I am willing to try anything and everything that promises to make my work better, and I am not afraid to make mistakes. If, like me, you have ever been called out for using a malapropism, grouched at for run-on sentences (or other grammatical horrors), or even for missing the point of the writing assignment entirely—at those tender moments in a class full of fellow writers, you know exactly what you do not know, and then some. I have spent enough time in writers workshops, genealogical institutes, local history seminars, and national conventions featuring the best writers and speakers, to put the pieces together.
At the point at which years of ruminating over classes and seminars and books about writing became “A-ha!,” that I wrote this book and the others in this series.
It turns out that becoming a better writer is not the only hurdle to writing and publishing a genealogy or family history. One of the changes I have appreciated most, particularly in the last twenty years, is an effort to raise the level of scholarship within the genealogical community. I applaud every effort to insist that genealogists cite sources and conduct reasonably exhaustive searches. It has been incredible to watch the progression from people-collecting hobbyists who seem more interested in the size of the tree than who is in it, to a collective group of thoughtful researchers who establish relationships with reasonable certainty.
Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of the quest for better scholarship has been a level of intimidation that many perfectly competent researchers feel when it comes to sharing their work with others—whether that be through a written genealogy, or even in public family trees online.
I want to change that. I want to give you permission to write your book the best way you know how, and cite your sources with or without each and every semi-colon in the perfect spot according to Elizabeth Shown Mills of Evidence Explained fame. Let me say that Mrs. Mills is a gracious and lovely person, and I appreciate the work that she has done to produce the most thorough and much-needed guide to citations ever written. It is neither she nor her work that twists knots in the stomachs of so many earnest and sincere genealogists. It is a small group of Puritans who insist that there is only one way to conduct genealogical research, and only those people who have the requisite genealogically important certifications who are qualified (i.e. allowed to refer to themselves as genealogists), and only the best among that group of elitists who are capable of writing an actual g e n e a l o g y.
To the Puritans I say, “NUTS.”
If, at Bastogne, Brigadier General Anthony C. McAuliffe could hold off the better-equipped German force of superior numbers surrounding him and his troops by that simple reply to a request for his surrender, then I think we can fend off the “mean” genealogists long enough to write our family histories, publish them, and put them out there for family and others to read.
Take heart.
You do not have to memorize Evidence Explained to publish a quality family history. If you can do the research, you can document it. You do not have to get a degree in English Literature to write a family history, either. You can learn to tell captivating stories.
You do not have to finish your research to publish what you have done to date. Frankly, there is no need to put off volume one waiting for volume fifty to take shape.
And, you do not have to have any experience with publishing to take your manuscript and mold it into a beautiful book.
Just keep reading.
Introduction

This book is a guide for anyone interested in writing a family history—to memorialize loved ones, to pass on memories and family lore, or to document your lineage.
This book is a conversation between you and me—one family historian to another. I have been where you are. I have slogged through far-away repositories and courthouses. I have dodged the bugs and snakes (and a few scary people) in cemeteries. I have accumulated a pile of research and scratched my head over how to put it together in a way my non-genealogical family members would read. I have made sense of it, and so can you.
So, what if:
You have a box of old photographs but no research?
You have research but no stories?
You have facts but no pictures?
You have family lore but no proof?
For the beginner, this book contains the elements needed to start with a box of inherited photographs and end with a finished book. For the intermediate, there are ideas for organizing your research, adding social and historical context, and writing in a vivid, believable way. For the advanced, it is a polishing cloth for your writing and your research, to make your book the best it can be.
This book has technical explanations. If you are technologically challenged, there are suggestions for hiring help in critical areas that you may not wish to tackle yourself.
This book contains some drudgery. Writing is hard work and some of the rules for publishing are no fun to implement, but are endured by publishers everywhere for the sake of the reader.
This book is not death by grammar. There are suggestions for catching and correcting the little bugaboos we all use because our first inclination is to write as we speak. Even the most prolific professionals do not write perfect books on the first try. Th