I just received from the printer two copies of the paperback version of my first published family history book. I would like to encourage those of you who have been researching forever like me to think about getting it into book format, even if it is for your own enjoyment. (I am an amateur genealogist.)
This is how I did it. I started with a family story that I discovered had a flaw. So that made me want to learn more about where this person came from, and who his people were. I thought that if I traced all of his descendants I might meet someone who had reached further back up the tree than I did. Thus led to two years of fairly intensive research into all the family members that descended from this person's great grandfather. The result to date is 526 descendants (including adoptees) in eight generations. (And no, I never did meet another genealogist.) Using Legacy, I entered all the data as I found it, sourcing it as I went along. I attached pictures to people or events at their normal size for the most part (being too lazy to resize, but this worked out in the RTF file). At some point I had to stop entering data and export into a document to begin my book. This is a hard decision to make, but you will learn that you can do it, and still add information even up to the last minute. I used Descendants Book Report, with these settings: Register format, Main entries for all individuals, no title page, Name Index checking off top four items; I included Child status so that the words (Twin) or (Adopted) would appear next to the child's name under their parents, age at death, cause of death, marriage status, all events, all notes for all people, all private notes, printing the brackets so they would stand out. Under pictures, I made sure to include "Embed the Pictures in the file" and all photos. I included the captions and descriptions, but no extra formatting. I set my fonts to size 12 which is what most books recommend, especially if you will have older readers. I included sources, printing industry standard, and formatted per the master source formatting option. I did not do headers or footers, choosing to do that later in the document. I then selected Rich Text File and saved it to my desktop. Using Microsoft Word, I opened up the file and immediately saved it as a DOC file. I installed the Macros previously discussed in the Archives to format the photograph captions. It worked beautifully. I chose not to run the second macro, to link caption to the picture, because instead I inserted text boxes under the pictures and pasted the captions inside. You do have to make sure you go to (in Word) Edit-Links to make sure the photos are within the document and not linked. You may want to wait until you are ready to upload to do this, to keep your file size small and working efficiently. Then I did some serious editing. I only used this Legacy output as a starting point. I made it more of a narrative, writing, "John lived in Drumna all of his life, and raised his children there," instead of the Legacy output, "He resided from 1823 to 1890 in Drumna." This takes a lot of time, so plan accordingly. You can start formatting your pictures by size, but wait until the very end to worry about their position on a page. Otherwise you will go crazy moving them every time you add something new early on in the book. The industry also recommends that you have a nice spacing between lines, but I had so much text, that I chose to use "Exactly 14pt" for my spacing. This allows the source numbers to show without crowding, and keeps all the lines spaced the same. The downside is your photos will also start appearing as only 14pt high, so you have to either format their line to be single space or change the photo so that it is Layout-Wrapping-Square with text. If I got new information as I was doing this formatting, I simply added a new line to the source list, and used that number, even if it was out of order. Try to remember to add the information to Legacy at the same time, or to the Legacy to do list. I also indexed my book completely, using the index facility provided by Word. It worked really well. I kept everything in one index, which was easy and I think looks much better than having more than one index. Indexing took me about a week. It was a good opportunity to proofread once again. Be sure to do a spell check when you are all done. My book has three parts, four appendixes, source list, index, and three extra blank pages called "Additions and Corrections." Part I is a narrative discussing the goal of my search, my findings, my conclusions, and other interesting details like common medical ailments and physical resemblances. Part II is a 5-generation chart generated by Legacy using the Descendant Chart report, No birth-death dates, Generation Numbers, Format: Generation Lines, 5 generations. I output this to text file. When I imported it into a new Word document, I did a find and replace using the Box Symbols to replace the ASCII text lines and dashes. They came out smoothly like the PDF generated report. I added some spacing between the family groups to show off the lines more clearly. (Just copy and paste a few extra "| |" in between.) Part III is the descendants book. So if you have one or two good months, you can do this with your existing research. I uploaded my Word document to Lulu.com, chose two types of books (black and white paperback and color hardcover), set prices, then notified relatives of the private links. I also uploaded a Legacy-generated PDF file of the Descendants Book report for family members to be able to download for free. (No charge at Lulu.) This file is 45MB in size, so it is an easy way to share this file among family members. I received two of the paperbacks today, and have to wait until mid-December for the hardcover. But holding this book in my hand was so thrilling. I wrote this too-long email just to encourage and hopefully inspire someone else on this list to get their book into print, too. I have two over-80 relatives who are looking forward to this, and I am glad I won't disappoint them. Sadly, I lost a third over-80 person this year who was a big key in connecting me with a long-lost branch. She was very excited about this book. Be inspired! Susan Daily p.s. I found the textbook, "Professional Genealogy" edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills to be very helpful in my final formatting of the book. Give Legacy as a Gift for 25% Off. Visit http://tinyurl.com/2b49et Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
