Write and Publish Your Family History Book, I Did and so Can You
By Tom Johnson
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About this ebook
A practical guide from someone who actually wrote and published two genealogy books on his family ancestry. This book is aimed at providing some insight and tips on how to create and publish a genealogy, or family history, and to publish it using tools available to everyone on the internet. Everything he writes about is something he either tried or researched and includes some helpful (hopefully) suggestions and bits of encouragement to help motivate others to do the same.
Tom Johnson
Tom Johnson is former senior editor at Netflix and has written movie reviews and features for E! Online, Moviefone, and People magazine, among other publications. His entertainment writing has been recognized with a Minnesota Newspaper Association achievement award and a National Hearst Foundation award for news writing.
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Write and Publish Your Family History Book, I Did and so Can You - Tom Johnson
How you can
Write Your Family History Book
I did and so can you
Tom Johnson
Copyright © 2017 by Tom Johnson
Cover Copyright © 2017 by Tom Johnson
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
Publisher: Thomas B Johnson Sr.
tomjohnson@genealogywriting.com
There are rules to writing
Unfortunately no one knows what they are
Note to readers
When I decided to write this book my main reason was to try and share the things I learned during the journey I made through the process of publishing of my own two Family History books. I attempt to relate what I went through to write and publish the books and, hopefully, share with others some of the experience I gained about the process and some of the hurdles I ran into and how to deal with them most of which were personal hurdles. Before starting I did the usual searching online and found a lot of information but no real firsthand accounts of someone who actually went through the process and relating the steps they had taken or the methods they used in creating a manuscript and then looking for and selecting a publisher and finally publishing the book. Not saying there aren’t any, as there are books out there on writing about your genealogy, but I only bought and read one, tried to read it, but it didn’t relate to what I was wanting to do which was to do it all on my own and doing it without a lot of expense. I decided not to read any more how to books to avoid any unwanted influence when writing my own and opted to wing it and tell the story my way, which may not be polished or well written but it’s in my own words and is factual as far as what I did.
The goal of this book is to not only provide information on how to write and publish but also on how to deal with all the things that are on your mind when you take up the task. I want to try and get you to motivate yourself with the information and insights I garnered from my own experiences. I try to write in a somewhat light manner because being serious all the time is a bad thing in my opinion.
I don’t claim to be a professional writer and I don’t even profess myself to be a professional Genealogist for that matter though I have been doing genealogy research for 25 plus years. I do consider myself an average everyday person who has done what I thought I would never do, write a book, or rather two books, and I hope you can find some small gem in this little document that will help you towards your own self-published book.
The Getting Started Challenge
Writing a book is a challenge, no doubt, and though you may have been thinking for some time about writing about your Family History the challenge and the complications give you a reason to procrastinate. I know this because I lived it and I am the King of procrastinators, I wrote the book on procrastinating, well not exactly wrote the book on it (I was always putting it off) but I could have. The biggest challenge you face is not writing the book, it’s getting started, or getting started and staying started would be more accurate. I started many times and sputtered out, too much of a challenge I told myself but perseverance pays off and I finally reached my goal.
Before I we begin the detail about putting a book together and all the other fun things that go with writing about people from your past, folks that you can no longer ask if piece of information is correct or not, let me try to ease you up to the starting line, some baby steps so to speak.
The physical