All of us have plans to publish our family history. Until recently, that has been a challenge. Either you typed and printed your original then had your local copy center make copies held together with flimsy plastic spines or you spent a lot of up-front money to have a publishing service typeset your story and photos and print a specified minimum number of bound books. Either option was pretty expensive and you still had to cajole your family into buying enough copies to cover your costs.

Things are very different today! Thanks to print-on-demand services like Lulu, you can create beautiful volumes of your family history with all the photos you want. The only up-front cost is your time. And, if you only want one copy of your masterpiece, you only pay for one copy.

Here’s how it works . . .

First, you visit the Lulu site and set up a free member account. Browse through their publishing information pages to see what size and binding option would be best for your project. They provide lots of helpful information on choosing margins and setting format options. Following those guidelines, create your publication using familiar tools like your word processing software or your graphics/photo editing application.

Once your project is written, edited and the layout is the way you want it, convert it to a high resolution PDF file [see Research Toolbox: PDF Reader and Creator] and upload it to your Lulu account. Lulu provides a nice wizard that walks you through the process of building your publication. Size, binding choice and number of pages will determine the base cost for one copy of your book. You can markup the price to help cover your costs in the research and writing effort. Lulu then sets up your personal online bookstore to sell your book. You can keep it private – just for people you invite – or make it public so anyone can come buy your book.

Lulu’s base price includes the cost of managing your personal store, printing and binding the publication, performing all the selling and customer service tasks and sending you your profits. There are no minimum purchases. It doesn’t matter if you sell one copy to yourself or thousands of copies to the world.

What kind of things can you do with Lulu? Here are a few ideas:

• family cookbook
• family history
• family treasures – see Vintage Publishing service below
• photo books or scrapbooks
• family newsletters

Lulu can be a significant resource for family associations, historical societies and genealogical societies. Using Lulu, these groups can offer both print and digital versions of their publications AND maintain an archive of previous issues. Transcription projects can be offered as print publications or searchable CDs. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Oh, many in the genealogy community might also be interested in their new Vintage Publishing service. They will scan your family heirloom and create a high-resolution copy in PDF format which you can then purchase in the binding style of your choice.

My experience with Lulu has been a very positive one. Stop by the Moultrie Creek Bookstore to see for yourself how easy it is to get into the publishing business. I have plans for many more family publications. My only hurdle now is time. [heavy sigh]

Related posts:

• Look what you'll find at Lulu
• Researcher's Virtual Toolbox Updated
• Research Toolbox: Taking Notes
• Research Toolbox: Skype Account
• Screen Capture

Tags: Lulu, pod, publishing, Tools
This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under Research, Tools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.