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!).
Knowing how traditional publishing works will help guide your home-publishing project. Because most home-publishing projects involve most of the steps used in traditional publishing, this chapter will give a quick overview of the traditional publishing process.
PRINTERS, PUBLISHERS, VANITY PRESSES, CONTRACT PUBLISHERS AND PACKAGERS
Many people confuse publishers and printers, and get even more confused when you mention vanity presses, contract publishers and packagers. Here is how to tell them apart:
• A printer prints books. If you take your publishing project to a printer, the printer will (for a fee) print up the number of copies you specify and deliver them to you.
• A publisher, as you might guess, publishes books. Publishers buy the rights to the book from the author (usually paying a royalty, which is an amount paid to the author for every copy sold); arrange to have the book edited, designed and printed; advertise the book; and distribute it (which means getting it into bookstores, book clubs and so on).
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