How Much Does a Family History Book Actually Cost?
The number people compare is almost never the number they end up paying. Here is where the rest of it sits.
This is a harder question to answer than it should be, because the price people quote and the price people pay are frequently different numbers, and the gap is not usually anybody being dishonest. It is that the cost of a family book has three separate parts and most comparisons only look at one.
The three parts
- Getting the story out of somebody. The prompts, the system, the year of asking. This is the part that is usually priced and advertised.
- Turning it into a printable book. Layout, images placed, a file you can actually send to a printer. Sometimes included, sometimes a separate charge.
- The physical object. Printing and binding, multiplied by however many copies the family wants.
A quoted price that covers only the first part can look extremely reasonable next to one that covers all three. Working out which you are being quoted is most of the work of comparing.
Where the extra cost usually hides
Three places, in order of how often they surprise people.
- Additional copies. This is the big one. A family book is essentially never wanted in a quantity of one, and if every copy is priced like the first, the real cost is several times the headline. Ask for the price of five before you compare anything.
- Reprinting later. A book finished this year will be wanted again when there is a new grandchild or a death in the family. Whether that is cheap depends entirely on whether you hold the file.
- Length. Some models charge more for a longer book, which quietly penalizes the families whose parent had the most to say.
What ours costs, in full
So that this page is useful rather than merely cautionary, here is the whole thing with nothing left out.
| What | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A book, for the year | $29 | Life story, parents, kids, marriage, military, travel |
| Mission journal | $39 | For a missionary still serving, written as it happens |
| The print-ready file | Included | You download it and own it |
| Extra copies from us | None to buy | You own the file, so you print what you want |
| A longer book | No change | Length does not affect the price |
| Engraved wood cover | $129 | Shipping included, made by hand |
| Leather cover | $149 | Shipping included, made by hand |
| Wood and resin cover | $189 | Shipping included, made by hand |
The printing itself is whatever your print shop charges, because you take the file to whoever you like. That is deliberate: it means we are never the reason a second copy does not get made.
The cost people forget entirely
There is a fourth cost and it is not money. It is whether the book ever gets written.
A great many family history projects are bought, started, and abandoned, and the money spent on an abandoned project is entirely wasted no matter how low the price was. So the real question is not what does this cost, it is what does this cost multiplied by the likelihood that it finishes.
That is why the amount an eighty year old has to learn matters as a financial question and not only a kindness one. A cheaper service that requires an app, a login and a password reset has a much higher chance of quietly stopping in March, and a project that stops in March cost the full price and produced nothing.
What a printed copy actually costs
Since you take the file to a print shop, the printing is a separate cost and it is worth knowing roughly where it lands. It depends on three things: the page count, the paper, and whether you print one copy or several in one run.
The number that surprises people is how much cheaper additional copies are in the same run. The setup is the expensive part, so going from one copy to six is nothing like six times the cost. This is the practical argument for deciding the family's total number before you print rather than coming back twice.
Get a quote before the book is finished rather than after. Print shops will quote from a page count and a paper choice, and knowing the number early stops the printing step from becoming the thing that stalls at the end.
Is a handmade cover worth it?
Honestly, not always. If the plan is six copies for six siblings, print six ordinary bound copies and put a cover on one. The cover is what makes the object feel like an heirloom, and an heirloom is a thing there is generally one of.
Where a cover genuinely earns its price is as a gift. It is a real object that can be wrapped and opened on a day, with the book built over the following year and bolted into it. Nothing is made until you have approved a mockup, and if it is not right you can change anything or take a full refund.