How To Put Together A Family History Book

The local library where I work has a little trick for this, using the “editions” tab on WorldCat. The trick is to search for a title, and get back a list of all known editions of that work, each with its own OCLC number, published, and date. Then you can click through to the full bibliographic record for each edition. It’s a bit of a clunky interface, but it’s the only place to get a view even remotely approaching this, and for really obscure stuff, searching the abstracts of academic dissertation can yield results: some PhD student has probably done the bibliographic work for a critical edition as part of their research.

Kindle’s Family Library doesn’t work 100% of the time for sharing books, but it’s pretty good for the most part. For example, you can link up family members’ accounts to share eligible books. But a lot of popular authors these days do not allow their books to be shared through Kindle’s Family Library. So we tend to share older books, like sci-fi and romance titles. Often we’ll find out after we purchase a new release that it’s not eligible for sharing, but we’ve managed to save a lot of money on books that are shareable. Just be sure to check the details of a book before you assume it can be shared.

A broad spectrum! It’s really quite amazing how prices for custom-made books can vary from project to project. As an example, a simple self-published book would probably be in the area of $30 or so, while a beautifully designed hardcover book could be in the hundreds. One also has to consider the amount of love that is put into each custom book that an entrepreneur or artist is making. As a result, the higher price can be even more warranted. In addition, a single, one-off book can often cost greater than $1000, especially if artists or designers such as illustrators are involved in creating the book to make it a truly custom work of art. Whether you are looking to treat yourself to a special memento or simply investigating whether custom books could be for you, there are items to suit all budgets. Everyone’s book is different.

Normally I’ve archived them and just search through my archive to pick out ones I’ve read before

Indirect indeed. To access your online reading history go to Amazon.com, log in to your account and go to account settings (top right of the page). From there click on Manage Your Content and Devices. From there click on the ‘Content’ tab on the right hand side of the page and select Books from the drop-down list at the top of the page. Most books are listed in chronological order. You can search for specific books in the list but it can sometimes be helpful to scan through the list of books you’ve downloaded in case you remember reading part of a book but didn’t finish it. Occasionally it’s helpful to ‘tidy up’ your list and remove samples of books as well as those that you know you’ll never read.

Is there a difference between closing a book and putting a Kindle to 'sleep'? I assume Kindle tracks 'time spent reading' based on how long a book is 'open' and how long a device has been 'on'. So, someone who falls asleep with a book open for an hour would have 'reading time' logged for an hour as well. The history isn't entirely accurate it is an estimate based on 'time that a book is open'. So beware that ‘minutes read’ is probably going to include idle time as well, so it’s best to look at it as a rough proxy rather than the “truth” – it’s a way to get an estimate of how long it took to read a book rather than actual focused time. The “book” count is probably more reliable as a historical record of the books you spent a lot of time reading.

As someone who has done a lot of formatting of book pages for manuscripts and print ready PDFs, I can say that there is nothing more annoying than a wonky margin, a line of text that splits to a new page unexpectedly, or a font that just doesn’t look right. Most of these problems are simple to fix if you check the basic settings first. So, check the size of the pages you are using. Are you using 6×9 for trade paperbacks, or A4 for your docs? Also, check for ‘keep lines together’, ‘prevent widow orphan pages’ and similar options in your word processor. These are often found in the paragraph formatting options for Word and Google Docs, and can be toggled on and off to test their effect. There are times, however, where more serious reformatting is called for. This can include troubleshooting consistent font display or unGhosted hyperlinks. It’s rare that I’ve had to convert a file to a ‘clean’ format in order to allow reformatting from scratch, but such has been the case with both Word .doc and Google Doc files. Once in plain text (.txt) these can be reimported into almost any program. For eBook reformatting, however, I use the wonderful free software, Calibre, which also allows for reformatting of EPUB errors. For print, it’s worth noting that InDesign’s ‘package’ feature creates a zip file including all used fonts and linked graphics – which is very handy when distribution to printers/copy shops etc. It’s also very simple to have a second pair of eyes scan a test print for subtle errors such as: over running headers to the bottom of the page; and images bleeding into the gutter. It’s a little puzzle, but ultimately very rewarding when sorted.

As I said earlier, online retailers like Etsy also offer very affordable books, including some interesting self-published history books and even historical zines. It’s great to support independent authors and even learn something new from their works, and often for a low price too. If you have a large bookstore like a Barnes & Noble near you, also check their discount sections both online and in-store. I was surprised to find some very affordable books in their online sale section, and it makes for a fun little scavenger hunt to find the perfect book for you!

Write a pre-writing ritual to get yourself in the ‘zone’. This can be making a special tea, listening to a particular playlist, looking over notes from previous sessions. Mine is five minutes of absolute useless free writing to get all the nonsense out of your brain first, then you can start to focus on actual writing of the project for the session. Minimise distractions by using apps to block your social media for the period of time you need to concentrate. The biggest killer of a productive writing session is the tendency to keep checking back for something.

I also needed to explain how the OPF file (the package document for your EPUB) works. This file contains a manifest of all the files in your EPUB and the spine which lays out the reading order. Your hyperlinked TOC (whether NCX or NAV) is referenced from here, so if the reference to your hyperlinked TOC is wrong or missing it won’t appear in the reader’s navigation panel, even though your HTML TOC page has been perfectly linked up. When using Sigil to edit your EPUB it manages the OPF file for you but when hand-coding you need to add to the OPF XML file and add a entry for your TOC file. It is very easily broken which is why for most creators using a dedicated tool is the pragmatic choice.