Jim Panttaja’s Genealogy Research

There are a couple of services that let you publish ‘books’. The one that I have the most experience with is Lulu. With this service, I can take a book that I have created using Family Tree Maker, upload it to Lulu.com, and then order printed copies of the book to share with my relatives. I could also choose to allow others to order copies directly either in printed form, or download a PDF file.

The process if fairly simple, and the books are quite inexpensive. I often print copies for myself that are spiral bound. The binding let’s me easily review them, mark them up, or use them for reference on a trip to the library. I often end up giving them away when I visit relatives. For smaller family groups, I have had them printed in booklet form (a staple in the middle like a magazine. I just order the latest revision that I have created of my personal genealogy (356 pages) in ‘perfect bound’, which is sort of like a paperback book.

The perfect bound is about $12/copy for 356 pages.

I usually request one first - take a look at it, make sure that the pages are right (odd numbered pages on the left), and proof it one more time. Then I order several (might be Christmas presents - or maybe some copies for my local library).

One trick you will have to overcome is to make sure that the fonts are all embedded in the .pdf file. I accomplish this by opening the PDF file on my Mac using PDFPen (which also let’s me do some simple editing - Family Tree Maker sneaks in a blank page for me at page 3 on all of my documents. I haven’t figured out how to tweak Family Tree Maker to not do that - so I just remove the page using PDFPen). Having opened the file, I ‘print to PDF’. That gets the fonts embedded, and I am good to go. On a PC, I had to use to accomplish the embedding.

Here is the cover of my book on John Miller Camron.