My Dad's Book

Even before I was finished with "Who's Been Sleeping..." I had begun to put together a book about my dad's service in WWII. Because I have all of my dad's papers (as well as photographs, record albums, sheet music, etc.), I have an interesting assortment of items from his years in the military. It seemed like a shame to keep the memories in a box. I had talked with dad a bit about his service and fortunately I wrote a bit of it down. Building on my notes and his photos, I researched his army air corp unit (not much there0, the ship he was transported on, and all the cities and bases he had mentioned. It's all together now in a tidy little book.

I was debating whether to just run off a few copies for my family, which would be the easiest way to go about this, or actually publish the book through my publishing company so that I could possible sell a few copies to the libraries and historical societies in Cincinnati. If I go with the second approach, I would have some copyright issues. I have used some photographs of the ship, planes and military bases which I found on the Internet. I would need to secure permission to reproduce the photos if I do anything beyond making a few copies for my siblings.

In the meantime I have been looking at options for laying out the book. I obviously can't afford to hire a book designer for this particular book, and I just don't know how to use Indesign. As I was looking at options on the Internet, I came across a site called blurb.com. They offer a free book template which is fairly customizable. I downloaded the program last night and have begun looking at it. Of course they would like for you to print the books through them, and I certainly would be willing to check out their pricing. We'll see how user friendly the program is first. I'll keep you posted.