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The Table of Contents is Your Map

One of the first pages that I look for when I pick up a book is the table of contents. It quickly gives me an idea of what is included in the book and where it is located. It is like a map that provides easier navigation within the book. The table of contents is very handy for the reader not only when they first pick up the book, but each time they are looking for specific information or a certain story.

Here are some tips for a good table of contents page. Keep the style of your table of contents (margins, fonts) consistent with the rest of your book. Include all of the chapter titles and as many of the important stories or documents that would be helpful. I like to have a dot leader (several periods in a row) before the page number, but they aren’t necessary. By using a right tab stop with dot leader in your word processor, the page numbers and the dots will all line up. If you want, you can make a separate page that lists all the pictures in the book and their page numbers.

It is possible to “mark” your chapters in your word processor and automatically generate the table of contents with the page numbers on them. Some have been successful at this, but I suggest the manual method of making the table of contents. It is usually much faster and easier. Here is a step by step guide for the automatic generation in Word. Microsoft has templates that you can use. Here is a link to the template.

Here is a link to Wikipedia’s more detailed explanation of the table of contents for those that would like to read more.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Fun with Fonts

There are so many fonts available so you can really have some fun with the design of your book. There are decorative fonts, plain fonts, and everything in between. So, how do you choose? Do you go for the “look” or “readability” or both? These are great questions that don’t have simple answers.

Don Campbell has done a great job of explaining (in easy to understand terms) the intricacies of fonts. I would suggest that you read it. Here is a link to his page:

http://www.athleticaid.com/yaquinapress/fonts/index.html

Don’s suggestion is a great one and I would agree with him to do the following test of the font that you want to use in your book. “Print a full page of text in the format of your book and at the page size of your book. Cut those pages in their final book size and place them into a book that is about the right size to see how they look and “feel” in a book. Scan your eyes back and forth and see how readable the text is. Test how easy it is to rapidly scan from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If you carry out this kind of text, varying the font, the font size, the leading and the book formatting you will start to realize that fonts which look fine in a small sample may be tiring or unpleasant to read in a book. In the end, the choice is yours and may actually affect whether your book gets read all the way through.”

The most common font that we see in the books we publish is Times New Roman. It is a very readable font. When you have chosen the fonts that you want in your book, you will need to make sure that the publisher can print those fonts or you can make a PDF of the file so it will print correctly. (See my post on File Formats for more information about this.) Happy font hunting!

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Make the Publisher your Friend

As you work on your book, it is a great idea to contact several potential publishers. Talk with them and determine early on who you want to work with. They will be able to give you guidance and ideas to help improve your book that you can do while you are still in the editing process. This will help you produce the best book at the best price. If you wait until you are finished with your book to talk with them, it may be too time consuming or costly to make the changes to get the book the way you really want it. By making friends with the publisher, they will be a resource for you that you can call on when you have a question. It will give you one more person that will help you bring your family history to completion.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Selling your Book to Family, part 2

This post is a continuation from part 1. Here is my suggestion if you are trying to sell your book to cover most of your costs.

I suggest that you include the family in several communications as you work on your book which will help a lot when it comes to collecting the money for the books. You don’t want to surprise them with a phone call saying that you have written a book and are going to print it next week and need $125.00 tomorrow for the five copies of the book for their family. Most families won’t be in a financial situation to react that fast and will decline the books even though they really would like to have them. But if you communicate with them several times along the way, everyone will be much happier and better prepared. Contact them in the information gathering stage and let them know what you are doing and the scope of the book (who and what will be included in the history). Ask them if they have any information or pictures that could be included in the book and let them know that they will be given the opportunity to buy some copies for their family when it is done. Then contact them again when you are writing and nearing the completion stage. Tell them that you anticipate printing the books in a few months and that the cost of the book will be about X dollars (you can get a ball park estimate from most printers that will help with this part). The next contact can be when you have finished the book and have the bid in your hand. You now know how much it will cost to publish and can estimate the shipping costs. Contact all of the family letting them know what is included in the book, the number of pictures and number of pages of the book. Let them know some of the key stories and important information that is included; this way the can see the value of the book. Then tell them the price of the book and the shipping costs. Let them know what date you need the money to be included in the advance orders. Then, here is a tip that I learned a long time ago, tell them that there will be a few extra copies of the book that will be available to purchase after they are printed and the cost is $5.00 or $10.00 more per book. People love to save money and they will be more willing to meet your deadline so they can save. You will still need to follow-up after the deadline with those that don’t order to see if they just forgot to order the books or if they really don’t want some, but you will have a much better response with this tip. (Be sure to read my post about printing a few extra copies.)

I hope you find this helpful as some of my other clients found in overcoming the financial hurdle that may be keeping you from moving forward.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com http://www.sgenealogy.com/

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Selling your Book to Family, part 1

There are three schools of thought when it comes to financing a family history project. First, you might be publishing it to sell for a profit. Second, you could be financing the whole project and are going to give copies away as a gift. And third, you are going to sell the copies of the book to try to break even or recover most of your expenses. I have worked with all three categories of people, but the most common by far is the third category, so that is the focus of this blog.

First, let’s take a look at the expenses of a family history book. They will include costs for gathering the information, such as buying certificates or mailing expenses writing to people who have the information that you need. There are expenses associated with writing the history like the paper and ink cost for printing all of the editing copies or maybe you bought a scanner to scan the pictures. Then there is the expense of printing and binding the book. And lastly there are the shipping or distribution costs. (You probably noticed that I left out the value of your time spent on the project. That is because if you are producing the family history to get paid for your time and effort then you would fall into the category of selling for profit, so I’m not covering that in this post.)

Typically, most people that I work with are only trying to recoup the cost of printing, binding and shipping. All of the preparation and writing expenses are a gift they give to the family. It isn’t too hard to figure out the amount of money that you need to cover the cost of printing, binding and shipping when your book is all ready to print and you have bids in your hand. But the problem is when your book is all ready to print you will want to do it right away and you will need to pay the publisher to produce the book.

In the next post I’ll give some suggestions to overcome this challenge that have worked well for others. (I’d include it in this post, but it would be too long. Besides this gives you something to anticipate for next week.)

To be continued …

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com http://www.sgenealogy.com/

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Old to New

Some days “change” seems like a bad word. It seems to me that things are changing at a faster and faster rate. Don’t get me wrong, I like the changes and the convenience of the newer software programs and the easier to use devices. I’m glad that smart people are figuring out how to make my life easier. The problem is not only learning the new programs (I understand that they are called apps now) and devices but converting all the old files to the new formats. (You may have guessed that I am going to focus on computer file changes for this blog.) Every now and then I need to look at an old file that I used years ago. The information is still valuable and it will save me a bunch of time if I can open the file and modify it instead of retyping the file. For word processing files, most of the time I am able to open the file and convert it to my latest version. For instance, years ago I used WordPerfect for word processing. I have hundreds of files in WordPerfect file format. Today I use Word 2007. If I need to open a file that is in WordPerfect 5.1 format, Word won’t do it. I first have to open the file in WordPerfect 9.0 and save it in that format, then I can open it in Word. My worry is, someday my future computer might not allow my WordPerfect to work with the operating system, so I won’t be able to access the information. The exact same problem could happen with my genealogy program. If I have a data file that is from PAF 2.31, I might not be able to open it in RootsMagic which is what I am using now.

The solution is to migrate the files with you as you move forward. I know that it may seem like a waste of time and you might be thinking that you will never need the file again. If that is the case, then delete it. But if you think that there is a chance of needing it, then set up a routine for changing all 0f the files to your newest version of software. My suggestion is to do this every time you get a new computer or each time you get new software. After you get used to using the new program or computer, then plan a time to methodically go through all of your old files to delete them or convert them. This is an investment in the future. Especially if you have gathered information for years for a family history that you want to eventually publish. If you are like most people who bring in their old program files to us and ask if we can still open them because they can’t, then you will be very happy that you spent the time moving the old to the new.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Multiple Volumes

How many pages can I fit into one book? This is a question that I get asked every now and then. They usually have a very long history and need to know at what point it would need to be split into two volumes. I think there are two different principles involved. First, is there a logical split because of the content? If you have two different family lines then it might make sense to split it into two different books. Second, if the book is so large that it is going to be hard on the binding as well as uncomfortable for the reader to hold, then two volumes makes sense. The general guidelines that I use for hardbound books is a minimum of 100 pages (50 sheets) and a maximum of 700 pages (350 sheets). If your book falls between these two numbers then you should be just fine. If you are less than 100 pages, then you might consider changing the binding to a soft bound book. The harder situation is when you are over 700 pages. There are a few things that you can do to make this fit into one book. You can change the margins to a smaller number and you can change the point size of the font to a smaller font. Both of these will decrease the number of pages in your book but will also make it a little harder to read. Hard choices. If your book is still too long, then you should decide to separate it into two volumes. Oh, and by the way, good work gathering and writing all that information. That many pages represents a huge effort.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Get What You Expect

When you go and visit your publisher, it is a great idea to ask to see samples of books that they have printed. Since there are many different quality levels it is easy to be expecting something different than the publisher is quoting. This will ensure that you both have the same product and quality level in mind as you discuss your book. May I share a very sad story about this? I had a very nice lady come and visit with me. She told me that a year earlier she had gotten a quote from us and another local printer. The other printer was a few dollars cheaper so she went with him. After months of trouble and reworking her book with that printer she found out that this was his first book and it turned out very poorly. She said that it actually cost her more than if we had done it in the first place. It wasn’t nearly the quality she wanted and her emotional cost in tears and hassle was huge. She wished that she had us print her book. I felt for her and told her that I would pass her story on to spare others this same grief. Save yourself a similar experience by asking to see a sample so you can get what you expect.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy www.sgenealogy.com

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Your Custom Computer Help Book

I use a computer most of my work day and there are several tasks that I do over and over again. I have found that it is very easy to remember how to use these programs. But there are several computer tasks that I do less than once a month. I have a really hard time remembering the easiest way to do them (or how to do them at all). I’m not sure if it is because my memory isn’t as good as it used to be or if it is just overload with so many different pieces of information that I am trying to store in my brain (I could blame it on “chemo brain” or “half-timers” but I won’t). Whatever the reason for my laps in memory, I have learned a good trick from my Dad. Dad started to use computers when he was in his 70s. It has been said that it is much harder to learn new things at that age, and I guess that it is true. Anyway, he would write down each step of every task. He would then put a title on the top of the page and file it alphabetically in a three-ring notebook. It does take a little extra time to do this, but it helps him so much that it is worth it. He doesn’t refer to his custom computer help book every day, but it is a great help when he needs to do something that he hasn’t tried for a while. My help book is electronic that I keep in a word processing file because that is easier for me. But either way, this can be a real time saver (not to mention the frustration it saves) when you don’t have to figure out how to do something all over again. Try it. Make your own computer help book for any task that you don’t do at least a couple times per month. See if it doesn’t help you, too.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

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Pictures and Captions in Word 2007

Occasionally I have someone ask me how to put pictures in their book using Word 2007. Here is a little step-by-step “how to” for doing that. Once you learn how it really is easy so keep at it until you have figured it out. Hopefully this will help you with your book. (Note: there are several ways to do the this in Word, but this is the method that I think is the easiest. If you know of a better way, please share it in the comment section.)

After you have scanned, cropped and adjusted your picture so that it looks just the way you would like, the you can insert the picture using the following steps. (For info on scanning, see my post A Picture is Worth …)

1. Click insert on the ribbon, then Picture. Locate the picture on your computer and double click (or select and click insert).

2. In the Format tab of the ribbon, change to the desired size. Then click on the Position icon and select where you want it on the page. I suggest that you change it from “in line with text” to a position on the page with text wrapping. If you do this than the picture can be easily moved to a specific place on the page. (There are other things that can be done to the picture such as change the brightness and contrast but I won’t cover them here.)

Inserting the caption:

1. With the picture selected, click on the References tab on the ribbon. Click on Insert Caption. This will open a little pop up box for captions. Type or paste your caption in the “Caption” field, and click okay. (Note: If you have a long caption, just type the first few words in this field, click okay, and then finish typing the caption in the text box.) This will put the caption in a text box that is below the picture and is already sized to the width of the picture.

2. The captions are usually set to automatic numbering, so to remove that information just click in the text box and delete it.

3. Now is a good time to format the text. (I like to type my text first and then do the formatting. To select all of the text in the text box, press Control & A at the same time.) You can center the caption in the box, change the font to your desired caption font or set it to bold italics so that it is set apart visually from your book text.

4. Next we want to group the picture and caption together so they stay connected. Click on the picture and then hold down the shift key and click on the caption below it. Their should be blue circles and boxes around both the caption and the picture. Right click on the picture and a little box will pop up. Select Grouping and then click Group. Your caption and picture are now grouped as one object.

5. Now we have to account for a bug in the Word program. You will notice that the text wrapping changed to “in front of text” when you grouped the picture and the caption. This can easily be changed back. Click on the Format tab on the ribbon, then select Text Wrapping and change it to square.

There you have it. The picture has a caption that will stay with it as you continue to edit your book. If you need to adjust the picture, you can “ungroup” the caption, make the changes to the picture and then follow the steps 4 & 5 again.

Here are some links to web pages that cover some things that I didn’t and for different ways to deal with captions. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP012289821033.aspx

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/microsoft-office/quickly-add-captions-to-your-graphics-in-word-2007/

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com