A self publishing journey

My grandmother as a Christmas gift as requested from my Aunt wrote down the stories of her life.  While doing so she found old letters from my grandfather in WWII, diaries from the beginning of his fathers career and diaries of her great great Grandfather getting settled in America.  She collected it organized it and created red binders for her 3 children.  The problem was over the years and moves one had gotten lost another was buried in some storage unit. 

I took on a project of digitizing everything.  I scanned the hundreds of pages then using OCR software created word documents of everything.  (Please note OCR software is still in need of improvement and requires heavy re editing) then laid out in InDesign. 

Then I edited, then family edited, friends edited I printed sample pages at staples and printed more again making the million corrections needed.

Then I googled, which is always a mistake as I found more information on people that had been lost to the family.  Adding some of the information in I had to stop the black hole of additions.

Finally it was ready, using Lulu.com I now have a printed book of my family histories, and a newfound respect for all the editors, artists and publishers in the book industry.