Producing A Quality Family History

For anyone looking to create a useful, lasting history of your family: This is a book that should adorn the library or bookshelves of all genealogists! Whether you're an amateur or professional, chances are the ultimate goal of your research is to produce a quality family history. Producing A Quality Family History, by Patricia Law Hatcher, guides you through the steps required to create an attractive-and functional--family history report. Learn how to organize your work, how to write the narrative, choose type faces, grammar styles, and punctuation. You'll also see how to create useful bibliographies and discover ways to incorporate photos and illustrations effectively plus much, much more!

This all-ages guide makes genealogy fun and exciting. You'll find answers to all your family history questions using the simple, achievable steps found inside. Family History Detective includes: • Tips on how to find family history information in your own home • Websites, resources and techniques for online research • Complete instruction on locating and using census, courthouse and church records • An overview of library and archive research • Instructions on how to plan, record and organize your research • Fun ways to share your discoveries with others

This in-depth guide will help you use Family Tree Maker 2010 to create a family history that you and your family will treasure for years. Start building your tree by entering what you already know. Then follow the author's step-by-step instructions to locate more information about your ancestors online, add photographs and rich media files, and design charts and reports to display and share. Learn the why, how, and when of using its most popular features; get advice for mastering advanced tasks; and read quick lessons that will make your family history research fast and fun. All in a fully indexed format complete with screenshots and straightforward instructions written specifically for the newest and best Family Tree Maker ever.

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 how to 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. Keywords: family history, genealogy, write a family history, write a genealogy, publish your family history, how to self-publish, book publishing, storytelling, book marketing, designing a book

Writing a family history does not have to be an overwhelming task. This book outlines a simple process that will aid your research and create pages of information that can be read and understood by all family members. Your research will become faster and more accurate and your family can enjoy the family history. Remember, our writing should go beyond finding documents and filling in charts. Hopefully, the methods discussed in this book will show the reader a simple format that will make this task much easier. You may be reluctant to write down these stories because you do not consider yourself a writer. Our ancestors were ordinary people. Why should we write about them? All of our immigrant ancestors contributed to America’s history and their stories should be saved for our grandchildren. Our family histories should give clues of their roles and this will help us understand our roots.

"This book is a simple and easy to understand 'how-to' book that is focused on overcoming the often daunting dilemmas with presenting your family history data and stories in a meaningful way"--Back cover.

Many people want to write a family history, but few ever take on the job of publishing one. If you've done the research, and you want to make a book from it, then Publish Your Family History is for you. It will tell you all the fundamentals of book production, together with the important details that distinguish a home-published book from a homemade one. You'll learn: how to get your manuscript ready for production; design ideas for the pages and the cover; methods of making pages with or without a computer and printing those pages quickly and inexpensively; and ideas on bindings that last and look great. Even if time is at a premium, you're not comfortable with computer technology, or the budget is tight, you'll learn how to publish a professional-looking family history of your own!

"First published in 2014 by the Penguin Group"--Title page verso.