Almost every old family business has the same photograph. It hangs near the register or in the hallway outside the office: a man or a woman in old-fashioned clothes standing in front of the first storefront, squinting into the sun.
Customers walk past it every day. The grandchildren who run the place now know the founder’s name and maybe one story. What that person risked, what nearly broke the business in its first ten years and why they made the choices that kept it alive are mostly gone. The people who knew are retired, or dead, or about to be.
A family business history is the story behind the photograph. Written in time, it outlives everyone in the picture.
Why do family businesses hire a ghostwriter for their history?
Because the family has the story, the business has the money and nobody has the time.
The people who know the history best are running the company, or they’re in their eighties and won’t sit at a keyboard. A ghostwriter turns their memories into a book without asking any of them to write one.
The stakes are bigger than most families realize. Family businesses make up the large majority of American companies; a 2021 study counted about 32 million of them, roughly 87 percent of all U.S. businesses. Family business researchers put survival at about 30 percent to the second generation, 12 percent to the third and 3 percent to the fourth. Every generation that passes without the story written down loses part of it for good.
Tampa Bay is full of examples worth writing.
The Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City opened in 1905 and is now run by the fourth generation of the same family. The historian Andrew Huse wrote its century-long history for the University Press of Florida.
J.C. Newman Cigar Company, founded in 1895 and still family run in its Tampa factory, published Cigar City, a book of photographs of the city’s surviving cigar factories. Publix, founded by George Jenkins in 1930 and headquartered in Lakeland, published its own fifty-year history in 1980. Every one of those started as a small business with a photograph by the door.
What goes into a ghostwritten family business history?
The founding, first. Who started the business, where they came from, what they gave up to do it and what the first years cost them. The near misses come next, the bad years when the doors nearly closed and somehow didn’t. After that come the generations, and how each one changed the business, argued about it and kept it going anyway.
The best company histories include the failures. A book that reads like a brochure gets skimmed and shelved. A book that admits the bad years earns trust, and the bad years are where readers learn what the family is made of. I go looking for setbacks in every interview. Readers want to know how the family got through the bad years.
Photographs, documents and artifacts belong in it too. Old ledgers, newspaper ads, letters and menus all help a reader see the business the way the founder did.
Who should a ghostwriter interview for a family business book?
Everyone who was there and is willing to talk. That starts with the oldest generation, as soon as possible. Then the current owners, siblings and cousins who left the business, and longtime employees. Employees remember things the family forgot or never knew, and their picture of the founder is less polished.
I record every interview, in person or on Zoom, and each one gets a written summary. Memories conflict, so I ask about the same events more than once and from different people. When three people tell the story of the 1970s flood three ways, the book either finds the truth or says the family remembers it differently. Both are better than a tidy version nobody in the family believes, least of all the people who were there.
I’ve written memoirs where the main subject had already died, working from papers and from interviews with family members, and it works.
It works much better while the person is still here. That’s the strongest argument for starting now.
Every old family business has a photo of the founder by the register. Customers walk past it every day. A family business history is the story behind the photograph, written before everyone who remembers is gone. – Richard LoweShare on X
Should a ghostwriter write a company history or a founder’s memoir?
It depends on who is telling it and who it’s for.
A company history is told in the third person and covers the whole span of the business. It suits a centennial, a sale or a handoff to the next generation, and companies give it to employees, customers and partners. A founder’s memoir is told in the founder’s own voice and covers their life, with the business as the spine. It suits a founder who’s still alive and wants to say what they learned in their own words.
One of my case studies covers a 92-year-old hotel pioneer who built resorts across a tropical island. He had typed out 30,000 words of his own memories, and I rebuilt them into a legacy memoir in his voice. That book could only have been told by him, and only while he was here to tell it.
Who owns a ghostwritten company history?
Whoever the contract says owns it, so the contract has to say.
When the company pays, the company owns the book unless the contract says otherwise. When a family member pays personally, that person does. Both are fine. Leaving it vague isn’t, because ownership matters later when the business is sold, the family splits or someone wants to publish a new edition.
I’ve ghostwritten several company-paid books, mostly for small companies owned by the person who hired me, so ownership was never in question. The largest project of my career was a company-paid book that the company owned with the executive’s agreement. Settling that up front made everything after it simple.
When should a family business start working with a ghostwriter?
Before the next handoff. Succession is when the founder’s knowledge is most at risk and most valuable. A book written during the transition gives the next generation the reasons behind the business, so they can decide what to keep and what to change. Anniversaries, a sale and a founder’s milestone birthday are all good deadlines, and a deadline gets books finished. Waiting for a better time is how the stories get lost.
What does a family business do with a ghostwritten history?
More than put it on a shelf.
Families give copies to every relative at the next reunion and to each grandchild when they join the business. Some print a special edition for the founder’s birthday. Companies hand it to new employees on their first day, so they know what they’ve joined.
It goes to longtime customers, suppliers and partners as a thank-you, and to the local library and historical society, where it becomes part of the town’s record. When the business is sold, the history goes with the sale and tells the buyer what they bought. And when the next generation has to make a hard call, the book tells them how the founder made the last one. A family history that sits unread in a box has done half its job. One that gets handed out keeps working for decades.
Where should a family business start its ghostwritten history?
With the oldest person who remembers the early years. Record them first, even before the book is planned.
Everything else can wait a few months. They can’t.
I live in Safety Harbor, I’ve ghostwritten 54+ books for clients, and I’m profiling family businesses across Tampa Bay, from the cigar makers of Ybor City to the sponge docks of Tarpon Springs. For the business side of a book, see how entrepreneurs use books to build authority, and for founders who sold, the acquisition memoir. My Clearwater ghostwriter page covers meeting in person.
When the family is ready, my ghostwriting service covers the whole book, and the Book Discovery Intensive helps you decide what kind of book it should be. The ghostwriting hub covers cost, contracts and process. Somebody in your family knows the story behind the photograph. Get it on paper while they can still tell it.
