The Little Book That Could

In December of 2010, The Family Curator and I met for our annual holiday visit. She lives near my in-laws, so when I'm in town I escape from the family for a couple hours and we have a nice visit.

We went to a restaurant in Pasadena and had cocktails and appetizers. We talked about genealogy and the year ahead. It was at this meeting where we came up with our three genealogy resolutions. She told me I need to write a book and self-publish it.

Now at the time, I'd had two beers and taquitos, so the idea of writing an e-book didn't sound scary. Later on, I realized it was quite a task. What had I promised?

In the coming weeks, I gathered my best genealogy blogging ideas and topics. Those alone made up about 35 pages. Then I added some more blogging ideas for professional genealogists and genealogy societies. The "little e-book that could" grew bigger.

With over 200 genealogy blogging ideas on paper, I decided to write some additional chapters on blog improvement, how to gain readership and increase comments. Eleven chapters later, this sucker was starting to look kind of like a real book.

I added some photos and moved stuff around. I read and reread. I put it away, then got it out and read it again.

By mid-summer it was done. Google announced they were changing the name of Blogger, so I waited for that so I could update all the mentions of Blogger in my book.

Then Google never changed Blogger when they promised, so I pulled "the little e-book that could" off the shelf and ran it through the machines. I learned how to use Lulu and Amazon Kindle Direct. I jumped through hoops and edited, then ran it through the machines again.

And now it's done. But before I tell you all about it, I need to deliver the first copy to The Family Curator, because she's pretty much the reason "the little e-book that could" even exists.

Stay tuned...