How to Write a Family History Book: A Step-by-Step Guide

From a pile of records to a printed book: how to plan, structure, write and produce a family history book that relatives will actually read.

A chart shows the shape of a family. A book tells its story. If you have spent years collecting names, dates and documents, a family history book is the way to make that work outlast you. Here is a realistic path from research files to a bound volume.

Step 1: Decide who the book is about

A book about everyone never gets finished. Choose one of these scopes:

• One surname: the descendants of the earliest known couple with that name.
• One person's ancestors: all lines behind your grandmother, for example.
• One place: the family in one village over two centuries.

A narrow scope makes a better book than a wide one, and you can always write a second volume.

Step 2: Choose a structure

The classic descendant book follows the Register or NGSQ numbering: one chapter per generation, one entry per person with a family, children listed under their parents. An ancestor book follows the Ahnentafel, generation by generation. Both structures can be generated automatically from a GEDCOM file, which gives you a complete skeleton to write into.

Step 3: Generate the skeleton

Upload your GEDCOM file to PrintFamilyTree and generate a book draft. You get a title page, one section per family with the facts already written as sentences, the sources as footnotes, charts at the start of each chapter, and an index of names. This is not the finished book; it is the scaffolding that lets you concentrate on what only you can add.

Step 4: Add the stories

For every family, write two or three paragraphs that the records cannot: what the village looked like, why they moved, what the interview with your aunt revealed. Use the interview notes and letters. Keep the tone plain. He worked as a blacksmith and died at 42 moves a reader more than any adjective.

Step 5: Choose the illustrations

• One chart per chapter, showing the family covered in that chapter.
• Photographs of people, with names and dates in the caption.
• Images of key documents: a marriage record, a passenger list, a letter.
• A map of the places, with the villages marked.

Scan photographs at 600 dpi and documents at 300 dpi. A print-quality page needs at least 300 dpi at the final size.

Step 6: Front and back matter

A book needs a title page, a short introduction explaining the scope and the numbering system, a table of contents, and at the end an index of names and a list of sources. Readers who only look up their own grandmother will use the index more than anything else.

Step 7: Edit ruthlessly

Read the whole text aloud. Remove speculation that is not marked as such. Check that every person in the text is on a chart and in the index. Ask one relative to read it for facts and one friend to read it for clarity.

Step 8: Print

Export a print-ready PDF in the trim size of your printer (A4 or US Letter for a simple bound book, A5 or 6×9 inches for a trade paperback). Print-on-demand services accept the PDF and ship single copies, so every branch of the family can order its own. Keep the PDF and the GEDCOM together; the second edition will be much easier.