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!

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

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

Best of luck to him.

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

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

It's still only an unedited Word document.

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

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

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