My 80 year old dad has written his life story ...

[TheFarSide]

... and a local bookshop has said they would stock it if he gets it published. I am under no illusion that it will be a best seller, but it's an interesting piece of social history. We're looking at self-publishing and I'm just wondering if anyone has experience of createspace.com or similar? All advice appreciated!

[belledechocchipcookie]

I'm not an expert but Lulu has been mentioned more then a few times on Twitter.

[TheFarSide]

Thanks for responding belle - I have also seen Lulu mentioned on MN so will be checking that out too.

[belledechocchipcookie]

Best of luck to him.

[toddlerama]

Please pm me when it's published! I love books like that

[TheFarSide]

I will Toddler, but don't hold your breath!

[TheFarSide]

It's still only an unedited Word document.

[ninah]

lovely! my grandad did this when he was 80, too, ds has just taken it in for World War 2 day. It's handwritten in copperplate handwriting and has lots of interesting day to day stuff about both wars (he was in Navy)
it begins with a children's party when the news of Queen Victoria's death was announced, and everyone stopped and went into mourning
I wish more people wrote their life stories! as you say, full of social history and lovely to have in the family

[SecretSpi]

Good for him!

I wrote my dad's biography a couple of years after he died (he'd been wanting to write his memoirs himself but never got round to it, so I put it together via his notes and chats with friends and relatives) and got a few copies printed for the family.

If you want to have it nicely published, with a proper ISBN and everything, I have heard that Matador is very good.
www.troubador.co.uk/matador.asp

[TheFarSide]

Thanks everybody. We are going to investigate some of these ideas when I'm home at Xmas.