Most family history is lost quietly, one person at a time. Collect the stories, dates and photographs from everyone who holds a piece of them — including the subject — and print it as a hardcover.
Start a life story book See how it worksThere is a version of this where one person interviews a parent with a recorder, transcribes forty hours, and produces a book. It is a wonderful thing and it very rarely happens, because it is one person's unpaid second job and there is no deadline forcing it.
Splitting it up is what makes it finishable. A sibling writes the years they remember and you do not. A cousin has the story about the move. An old colleague knows the working life nobody in the family ever saw. The subject writes their own chapters where they want to, and corrects the rest — which is the part you cannot do later.
Families use this for a parent or grandparent while they are still able to take part, for an immigrant generation whose account exists only in one head, for a family line assembled by whoever has the documents, and as the thing to make when someone is ill and the window is closing.
This is the one occasion with no deadline attached, so set your own — and set it, or it will not happen.
Their name, a portrait, the span of years the book covers, and a date you intend to print by.
“Anything about Dad” gets nothing. “What do you remember about the years on Fremont Street” gets three pages.
Stories, photographs and documents arrive as finished pages. You review each one, and you can order them into a timeline.
Order the hardcover when it is full enough. The project stays open, so a second edition later is normal.
No one person remembers a whole life, including the person who lived it.
Each contributor covers the years they were actually present for, which is how a life gets covered end to end.
The work is spread across everyone who cares about it, so it does not stall when the organizer gets busy.
Scans of photographs, letters and certificates are corrected on upload, so hundred-year-old material is legible.
The subject can write their own chapters and read what everyone else wrote, which is the whole point of not waiting.
Anyone with the link can add a page from anywhere, including the branch of the family nobody has seen in years.
A 10-inch square matte hardcover with a printable spine — a book, not a folder of scans nobody opens.
Ask for a decade or an object, never for “their life story.”
Nothing is owed until you order a book, and gifts from contributors apply straight to the print cost.
Create the project, invite everyone, and gather photos and stories for free. You only pay if you print.
A 10-inch square matte hardcover with matte interior pages, plus shipping. Extra pages are $1.25 each.
Friends and family can chip in toward printing — each $1.25 covers one page of the finished book.
Yes, and it is the main reason to do it now rather than later. They can write their own chapters, and they can correct the dates and names everyone else gets slightly wrong.
Longer than an occasion book, because there is no party forcing the date. Families commonly collect over two or three months. Setting a printing date yourself is what keeps it moving.
Ask narrower questions, and let people submit on someone's behalf. A phone call where you type what they say into the form counts, and often produces the best pages.
Yes — scans of letters, certificates, passenger records and handwritten recipes all upload as images and are enhanced the same way photographs are.
A hardcover is $34.95 for the first 20 pages, then $1.25 for each page after that, plus shipping. A sixty-page life story comes to about $84.95. The PDF is free.
Yes — additional copies of the same book can be ordered, which is the usual outcome for a family history.
Other occasions people build books for.
Start the project, ask four people for one decade each, and you will have more of it down than you have now.
Start a life story book