Most families have a genealogist. One aunt or retired cousin has spent years on the ancestry sites and owns the census records, the ship manifests, the marriage certificates and a tree that runs back eight generations. Somewhere else there’s a box of photos with nobody’s name on the back and a recipe card for the Christmas cookies in handwriting only two people alive can read.
Unfortunately, all of it sits in a pantry. Records, photos and recipe cards are ingredients. Nobody in the family has cooked the meal, and the people who knew how are getting older every year.
I get angry at what gets sold to families who want a family history book. Genealogy software will print a descendant chart, somebody binds it, and the family calls it a book. It has four hundred names and not one sentence anybody will read at Thanksgiving. The aunt did the hardest research work in the family, and she deserves better than a phone directory with a leather cover.
Jay Stifflemire, a Navy veteran who started a publishing company to get his own family’s stories onto paper, said it on Leaders and Their Stories in one sentence: “We always ask those stories with grandpa, grandma, aunts and uncles during family time and the holidays, but nothing ever gets written down.” The stories get told every Thanksgiving and lost by the next generation.
Can someone write our family history book?
Yes. A ghostwriter takes the research your family has already gathered, interviews the relatives who remember, and writes a book that reads like a story, with people you can picture and events in an order that makes sense.
A good ghostwriter checks what relatives remember against what the documents say, and chases down every place the two disagree. Those gaps hold some of the best stories in the book, and families are stunned to learn the legend and the record don’t match.
Genealogy software will print a descendant chart, somebody binds it, and the family calls it a book.
My own family is a good example. I grew up believing we had a lot of Native American ancestry, so I went to various sources, including a family history library, to find out. The person in the family picture everyone called an Indian turned out to be a circus performer dressed as one. She was Dutch. It was quite funny, though my family hated me for doing that. They prefer the myth. I prefer the truth.
Before you hire anyone, decide what you want on the shelf. Some families want a narrative book. Others want an organized archive of records and photos with short notes, and my piece on choosing between a family history book or a binder will help you figure out which one you’re after. A ghostwriter writes the first kind, and the family genealogist with a good scanner handles the second.
How do I turn my genealogy research into a book?
Pick a story and let the tree support it. A family tree has no plot, and a book needs one, so choose a person, a branch or a turning point, and use the research to prove and enrich what the interviews tell you.
Eight generations can’t all get a chapter. Readers will follow a great-grandmother who crossed an ocean at nineteen with a trunk and a cousin’s address, and they’ll skip a list of her siblings’ baptism dates. The records still matter, because they tell the writer where the family legend drifted from what happened, and families love finding that out. Everybody’s got one story that grew in the retelling.
Hand your ghostwriter everything, organized as well as you can manage, and tell them which records you trust and which you’re guessing at. Then expect the writer to push back on the family myths. I ask about the same event several ways, across several sessions, because people misremember, fold two events into one, and inflate or shrink what mattered. A census record from 1910 doesn’t care what Uncle Walt said at the reunion.
Does all that research go to waste if it doesn’t make the narrative? No. Put the full tree in an appendix, where the cousins who care about it can find it and everybody else can skip to the stories.
What does a ghostwriter do with old family photos, letters and records?
A ghostwriter uses them to date events and start conversations. A photo of a storefront in 1948 gives me a better interview question than anything I could invent.
Put a photo in front of an 88-year-old and ask who’s standing next to her father, and twenty minutes later you’ve got the story of the store and the cousin nobody talks about. Letters do the same thing with the added gift of phrasing. How someone wrote in 1952 tells you how they talked, and that’s gold for a writer trying to capture a voice.
Get names on the backs of the photos now. Every year a box of unlabeled pictures loses a little more of its value, because the people who can identify the faces aren’t going to be around forever. An afternoon with a pencil prevents it.
If the older generation is already gone, the book can still happen. I’ve written memoirs from a subject’s papers by interviewing brothers, sisters and other family, and my article on finishing a late parent’s memoir from their journals and recordings covers how that works.
Can a ghostwriter turn family recipes into a cookbook?
Yes, as a family cookbook where each recipe comes with its story: who made it and what the kitchen smelled like when she did. The stories give a family cookbook its value. This kind of book is a keeper, because a recipe is the one family record people still use every week.
Somebody in the family has to test every recipe. A card that says “flour until it looks right” and “bake in a hot oven” is a memory aid for a woman who made it four hundred times, and a stranger following it gets a brick. The ghostwriter writes the stories and the headnotes. Recipe testing belongs in a family kitchen, with someone writing down what the card left out.
The U.S. Copyright Office says a mere listing of ingredients gets no copyright protection. The same page says directions written with substantial literary expression, or a collection of recipes as in a cookbook, give a basis for protection. So Grandma’s ingredient list belongs to nobody, and the stories and directions written around it are what make it a book worth protecting.
If you’re a chef thinking about a professional cookbook, that’s a different project, and my piece on why a cookbook is the wrong book for most chefs explains why.
Can a ghostwriter write my family’s immigration story?
Yes, and immigrant family stories make some of the strongest family books there are. They come with a built-in shape: the place left behind, the crossing, the first hard years, and the generations who grew up hearing about all of it.
The grandparents who lived it have the details nobody else has. They know what they packed and what they sold, and who helped in the first apartment. Their children remember the stories, and their grandchildren remember hearing that there were stories. Each generation holds a thinner version. Start with the oldest living person.
Language is no obstacle to the interviews. Clients with limited or no written English are common in my practice, and it’s one of the main reasons people hire me. Someone who tells a story beautifully in conversation shouldn’t lose it because writing it down in English is hard. My article on writing a book in English when it’s your second language covers how that works in the interviews.
If you’re the grandchild, you’re the one who has to ask. Do you know where your grandfather slept his first week here, or who met him at the dock? Those answers are in one head, and you’re the family member with the most years left to carry them. Get them on a recording before you worry about anything else. Families who wait one Christmas too long lose that story for good, and nothing brings it back.
Don’t stop the book at the dock, either. The years after arrival carry as much as the crossing did, like the kid who translated for the parents at the bank and the family name that got shortened somewhere along the way. Those chapters are where the grandchildren recognize themselves, because they explain why the family sounds and lives the way it does now. A book that ends when the ship docks leaves out the part the youngest readers most need.
Letters, diaries and documents written in another language need a translator first. Translation is a separate job from ghostwriting, so have a qualified translator handle those papers and give the ghostwriter the translations to work from.
What should I gather before hiring a ghostwriter for a family history?
Gather whatever you already have and stop there. A starting pile and a list of who’s still alive to talk to is enough.
| Material | What the ghostwriter does | What the family does |
|---|---|---|
| Genealogy research | Uses it to prove and enrich the interviews; full tree goes in an appendix | Export the tree; set proven records apart from guesses |
| Photos | Dates events and uses them to start interview conversations | Put names and rough dates on the backs now |
| Letters and diaries | Reads the phrasing to capture how someone talked | Have a qualified translator handle papers in another language |
| Recipes | Writes the stories and headnotes | Someone in the family tests every recipe |
| Living relatives | Interviews them and turns names into stories | List each with age and contact; start with the oldest |
| Family legends | Checks memories against documents and chases the gaps | Write a page on the stories you suspect were exaggerated |
Export your tree from whatever genealogy site you use. Pull the handful of documents you consider proven, like birth, marriage and death records, ship manifests and military papers, and set them apart from the ones you’re guessing at. Put names and rough dates on the backs of as many photos as you can. Then write a page, in your own words, about the family stories you grew up hearing and the ones you’ve always suspected were exaggerated. That page tells a writer more about your family in ten minutes than a thousand records do.
Most important of all, list every living relative who remembers anything, with their age and how to reach them. You know better than anyone which of them talks and which of them clams up. Tell the writer, and mention the great-aunt who hates the phone but loves visitors, so the interview happens at her kitchen table.
Who in the family should work with the ghostwriter?
One person makes decisions, and the genealogist, if you have one, acts as the research partner. The same person can fill both roles, and it helps when they do.
Family history books have a lot of owners. Every branch wants its chapter, and two sisters will swear to opposite versions of why the farm was sold. Pick the decision-maker before anyone signs, and agree how disagreements get settled.
Choose someone the rest of the family trusts, since that person makes the hard calls, like whether the divorce everybody whispered about gets a paragraph or a chapter. A decision-maker the cousins resent turns every draft into a referendum. My piece on writing about family without a lawsuit or a family rupture covers the ground where these projects blow up.
Some relatives will want out entirely. Respect that. I once pulled a whole chapter from a coaching book because a family asked to be left out, and I’d do it again tomorrow.
What drives the cost of a ghostwritten family history?
Length comes first. My price is set per word against an “up to” word count in the contract, so going past it means a change order. Other writers bill by the project, the page or the hour, and a family history can hit a minimum fee, because interviewing relatives and sorting records doesn’t shrink in step with the page count. After length, the price moves with the number of relatives to interview, the amount of research and documents that need sorting, and any hard deadline like a reunion or a milestone birthday.
Organize the archive before you hand it over, since a garage full of unlabeled boxes adds sorting work to the scope. Design, editing and printing are separate costs on top of the writing, and photo-heavy books cost more to lay out and print. My article on what a ghostwriter costs and what moves the price goes through every factor, and my current rates are on the ghostwriting service page.
Watch out for the outfits that promise a “family legacy book” at a bargain price, take the deposit and send back a template with your names dropped in. An agency salesperson sells it, and a writer you never met fills it in. Your grandmother’s crossing ends up reading like everybody else’s grandmother’s crossing, and you paid for the privilege. That’s bullshit, and it works on families because nobody ever showed them what a real book from this material looks like.
My take
Genealogy gives you names. Interviews with living relatives turn them into stories somebody will read. Sort the boxes before you hand them over, and have someone in the family test every recipe that goes in the book. Steer clear of the bargain legacy-book outfits that drop your names into a template. Your grandmother’s crossing deserves better than reading like everybody else’s, and you shouldn’t pay for a form letter.
Where should a family history book project start?
Start with the oldest living relative, this month. Record a conversation, even on a phone, and put names on the backs of the photos while someone can still identify the faces. Gather the genealogy files in one place and mark what’s proven and what’s family legend.
Then talk to a writer. The Book Discovery Intensive is how I start with families who want the whole book written for them. If your family genealogist wants to write it herself, my book coaching will keep her moving and help her find the story in all that data. The Ghostwriting Hub has everything else I’ve written on hiring a ghostwriter.
You’ve spent years filling the pantry. The census pages, the manifests, the photos and the cards in faded pencil are all there. Get somebody to cook, and set the table while the people who remember the original recipe can still sit down and tell you if you got it right.
Genealogy, photos and recipes become a book when someone shapes them into a story. The Ghostwriting Advantage explains how to get that book written for you by a professional ghostwriter.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Are Recipes and Cookbooks Protected by Copyright?, Copyright Alliance
