Family History Publishers and Print on Demand Services

Short Run/Print on Demand Publishing Options for Your Ancestry Book

Holding a picture of an ancestor near a family tree.

Getty Images/Lokibaho

If you're interested in self-publishing your family history book, these short run and print on demand printers can print anywhere from one to hundreds of copies. If you need help with layout and design, many also provide this service and/or specialize in printing family histories.

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Amazon CreateSpace

CreateSpace, a member of the Amazon group of companies, offers a fast, easy and economical way to self-publish your family history or genealogy how-to book. Better still, your book will be listed in Amazon's catalog and be available for sale to millions of potential customers on Amazon. Books are produced as they are ordered and there are no set-up fees. Amazon just gets a cut of every book you sell. Interested in selling ebooks? Amazon offers publishing for the Kindle as well.

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Family Heritage Publishers

The chosen binder for the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Family Heritage Publishers offer archival-quality printing for any size publishing job.

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Family History Publishers

Based in Bountiful, Utah, this publisher will print and bind heirloom-quality books of all kinds — including family histories, town histories, biographies and family reunion booklets. They can also help you prepare your manuscript for publishing.

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Lulu

Lulu is a popular and relatively inexpensive "no frills" print-on-demand book publisher used by many genealogists. Lulu offers online tools, similar to your word processing software or graphics/photo editing application, for laying out and creating your family history book. Lulu even lets you set up a personal online bookstore to sell your book — either privately to family and friends, or publicly.

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Blurb

If your book plans include a lot of photographs, Blurb may be a great option. You can use their online software to prepare a book, or you can upload a pre-prepared PDF, and there are no upfront fees. Instead, Blurb takes a small fee from each book sale. You can set your own prices and payments can be made through PayPal. Both print and ebook options available.

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Modern Memoirs

Private publishing services for authors include a full range of editing services, plus printing and binding. They specialize in memoirs and family histories and can handle offset printing and digital print on demand.

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MyCanvas

Family history books, photo books, calendars, and charts can all be created and printed through the MyCanvas publishing service offered by Alexander's. This is a creative online design tool geared toward creating family history or other books. You can then print your finished pages at home or order a professionally printed, coffee-table quality book from MyCanvas.

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Nook Press

Upload your family history or genealogy how-to book in Microsoft Word or PDF format and the Barnes & Noble Nook Press tool does everything else to prepare and format your genealogy book for either print or ebook and publish it to Barnes & Noble's catalog. No setup fees — a portion of the proceeds from each book goes to Barnes & Noble.

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No Waste Publishing

Whether you need 25 books (their minimum), or a few hundred, No Waste Publishing offers print on demand will print your family history books in either hardcover or paperback. They also offer shipping and distribution service for your books to multiple individuals.

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Shortrunbooks.com

This division of Dilley Manufacturing Company provides binding-only services for your self-printed family history. Print at home or your local copy shop, and then send the manuscripts to them for hard-cover binding.

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SmashWords

A free publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors and publishers, SmashWords makes it easy to publish multi-format, DRM-free ebooks readable on any e-reading device. It is entirely free to publish ebooks on SmashWords, they just take a cut of the profit on each book you sell. Your ebooks are distributed to major online catalogs such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and the Apple iPad bookstore.

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Your Citation
Powell, Kimberly. "Family History Publishers and Print on Demand Services." ThoughtCo, May. 25, 2021, thoughtco.com/family-history-publishers-1422317. Powell, Kimberly. (2021, May 25). Family History Publishers and Print on Demand Services. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/family-history-publishers-1422317 Powell, Kimberly. "Family History Publishers and Print on Demand Services." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/family-history-publishers-1422317 (accessed April 25, 2024).