My Desktop Publishing Class

I taught a class on self-publishing at the Lake Steven FHC on Tuesday.
The class went well. I brought several examples of books (transcribed journals, cookbooks, bios, etc.) that I'd done myself and one my sister-in-law did of her parents/my in-laws. We also brought the laminator and the punch for spiral bound books as examples. The puncher is very heavy and it was nice of Michael to carry them from the office and into the FHC. He emptied the little punched holes but some still fell out leaving a trail wherever he walked like Hansel and Gretel.  I didn't have a handout but used a few websites such as familysearch wiki and about.com. We also looked at Lulu.com a print-on-demand book publisher and HeritageBooks.com, company that specializes in genealogy/history books. I also had an estimate from a local print shop for an order of twenty books and from Staples for just one book. I think a local printshop is the best choice for a your family history book if you want 100 or less. The print-on-demand are great for hard cover books when you don't know how many you will sell. We also discussed ISBN numbers: cost and whether needed for family books. I touched on ebooks such as Kindle.  I talked about layout, word processing and pdf files.
Here are some great links on familysearch wiki:
https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/A_Guide_to_Printing_Your_Family_History
https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Create_a_Family_History

And here are links from genealogy.about.com
http://genealogy.about.com/od/publishing/tp/family_history_books.htm
http://genealogy.about.com/od/writing_family_history/a/write.htm
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/booksmanuals/ss/FamilyHistoryBk.htm

Class description:

 Tues Oct 30^th noon “Publishing Genealogy” Cindy Alldredge. We will discuss home publishing, using a local printshop or print-on-demand publisher.We will also briefly discuss how to prepare the history for publication.