Publish a Book A great gift to celebrate a great accomplishment
How do you celebrate something that is beyond awesome? Publish a book about it. I mean a real bound book that include both text and photos. Three years ago my Dad was honored at Rutgers University. We had the entire transcript online but wanted to give him something more permanent. So off to the web I went in search of someone who would bind it all into a book. We now have a family heirloom celebrating Dad's personal history in the Korean War. It was a priceless gift for him and a keepsake for the whole family. Follow our story below and see if you can capture a memory and publish a book about it!
Our older son, who was a History major at Rutgers, had a senior project interning at the Rutgers University Oral History Museum for Veterans. As part of his internship, he had to work with a veteran and create an Oral History of their experience at war. He chose his grandfather to be the veteran that he would chronicle. He sat with him for many hours and was able to put together a chronology of both my Dad’s life as well as his years in the Air Force as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. The final interview took place with my Dad, our son and the Director. It was taped and then transcribed and entered into the Museum archives. A special ceremony honoring the inductees was held at Rutgers that spring and the Guest of Honor was fittingly, Tom Brokaw. Mr. Brokaw, aside from being a well known journalist, was instrumental in saving the personal history of veterans through his book detailing the WW II veterans, The Greatest Generation. It was an amazing day as all of these veterans were honored by induction into the Museum.
Our son introducing his grandfather.
Grandpa being inducted by Mr. Tom Brokaw with our son right behind him!
The challenge with our idea was to take the 40 page transcript and publish one copy. While there are many places like Shutterfly, Snap Fish and Kodak Gallery that have this type of availability to create photo albums, I found no place that would make just one copy into a leather bound book. Many office places like Kinkos and Office Depot could spiral bind it but they could not actually “publish” one book. Thus I began my website search and as you can guess.. I found a company that would do it. The price was extremely reasonable and they were very prompt and so helpful The company is Heritage Family Publishing out of Utah. Here's how we worked to publish a book with this wonderful company.
Step 1 Create your story on your computer Word processing program.. you can add pictures and graphics. Make sure you really proofread the end result BEFORE going to Step 2.
Step 2 You must convert your document into an Adobe PDF file. If you do not have a program on your computer that can accomplish this, you can download a trial program on line which will allow you to convert your document. Once you have converted your story into PDF, you CANNOT edit or change it.
Step 3 Go on Heritage’s website.
You will see all the various options. They have an array of leather cover colors as well as colors for embossing the title of the book.
Step 4 Call them with any questions. They are wonderful.. a real,live person actually answers the phone!
Step 5 Order and wait for it to arrive.
Here's the cover of our book
Here's the first page that my sister designed!
This permanent celebration is a perfect gift for so many recipients… create a book for grandparents about family history or create a book for your graduate before they head off to college or the real world. How fun would it be to create a book chronicling your student’s senior year or create a book based on family vacations? If you really put some thought into it, I'm sure you can come up with even more ideas to publish a book. This is a gift of love and time that can become a family heirloom!!!
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