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Post by And Kevin 2024 on May 28, 2023 21:43:44 GMT
storyterrace.com/en-GB/pricing/I wonder how many customers they get? I did wonder about recording my wife's grandad's memories. He died aged 96 around 30 years ago. Never got around to it, which was a shame.
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Post by potet on May 29, 2023 11:29:37 GMT
If you take into account all the research involved that takes many months, it is natural that the authors should charge such a lot. It took me several years to find all the necessary data to write my paternal grand-parents' biography in two volumes. I only charged relatives interested in a copy with the cost + tax + shipping. If they had addressed a French company like the one you mention, they would have had to pay a hefty fee.
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on May 29, 2023 22:47:17 GMT
Indeed. I cannot make my mind up if it's cheap or expensive. I expect it depends on how long they actually really spend on it beyond the interview time. The production schedule is the same for all three packages. 7 months. Why so long? It's not as if they are writing fiction.
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Post by potet on May 30, 2023 9:42:34 GMT
Indeed. I cannot make my mind up if it's cheap or expensive. I expect it depends on how long they actually really spend on it beyond the interview time. The production schedule is the same for all three packages. 7 months. Why so long? It's not as if they are writing fiction. In my case, it took me a long time to find all the necessary deeds in civil registers, fortunately now on line. Marriage deeds are the most fruitful. In the case of the Yoshida family who were friends of my grand-parents, I had to find one of their grand-sons, now an old man retired from education. He helped me fill the gaps in what I knew of his ancestor, a Japanese economist from Waseda University, Tokyo, with an additional M.A. from Madison. His life story read like a novelette. He sailed to Paris to attend courses at La Sorbonne, then moved to Dijon (my home city) because a famous French economist was teaching there. Yoshida was a passionate angler, so he settled in a small town 30km from Dijon on a large river (la Saône) since all he had to do is ride the train to Dijon to attend his course once a week. He patronized my grand-parents' cleaning and dying firm. He fell in love with one of their employees. The couple had four children; he legitimized them, but could not marry their mother until he had received his inheritance in the 1920s. He never had to work to earn his living. At the beginning of WWII, being a Japanese, he was an enemy for some time, but left alone. During the German occupation, they discovered he was not their friend because he had written on his copy of Mein Kampf that it was a bad book. So they confiscated his hunting rifles and ammunitions, etc.
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on May 30, 2023 22:04:31 GMT
There are potentially easy ways of finding stuff out, at least in the UK who love to keep official records on everyone. search.findmypast.co.uk/search-united-kingdom-recordsBut recording a person's life is really a retrospective diary, and lucky if they actually kept one! I doubt they go in too much detail, just memories. It of course helps if they are still alive! I would imagine the interviews are recorded, then if speech to text cannot handle the way many people speak, a touch typist could sort it out quite fast. Then an editor to tidy it up and check details. Then bang it through Lulu!
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Post by potet on May 31, 2023 9:16:04 GMT
There are potentially easy ways of finding stuff out, at least in the UK who love to keep official records on everyone. search.findmypast.co.uk/search-united-kingdom-recordsBut recording a person's life is really a retrospective diary, and lucky if they actually kept one! I doubt they go in too much detail, just memories. It of course helps if they are still alive! I would imagine the interviews are recorded, then if speech to text cannot handle the way many people speak, a touch typist could sort it out quite fast. Then an editor to tidy it up and check details. Then bang it through Lulu! Yes, things are easier now thanks to the internet, but a serious biography still requires a lot of work. My grand-father who was one of the aldermen of Dijon, and a former alderman of Seurre nearby, left an official report on the arrival of the Germans and the flight of the French authorities followed by that of plenty of people ... most of the latter coming back after the armistice was signed. During the German occupation, a professor of English at the University of Burgundy, who had been a cavalry officer during WWI, started one of the many resistance movements. He asked every former alderman of Dijon to state what he did during that period. He then published the collection and each author was required to pay 40 francs for his own copy ... all this under the very eyes of the Germans, who, obviously were not very attentive, and perhaps couldn't care less. His secret activities were only discovered during the last year of the war. He was tried, and saved by a witness from a town in Germany he had been in charge of when the French forces occupied Germany in 1918. That witness was a mathematician who swore his town had suffered no brutality from the French thanks to the authority of their officer. Such are side stories to the main one that focuses on my grand-parents, but their make the book richer and more interesting because they provide a context that illuminates many things.
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on May 31, 2023 22:42:13 GMT
I suspect Storyterrace literally just takes down a person's memories as they are spoken. I doubt they do any research or checks if the memories are accurate, which they are possibly not! They perhaps don't even make sure they are not libellous because it's not exactly going to be published. It could be of use to their offspring and descendants (how great granddad used to live) but otherwise it's simply a type of vanity 'publishing'. And expensive at that!
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Post by potet on Jun 1, 2023 16:36:17 GMT
I suspect Storyterrace literally just takes down a person's memories as they are spoken. I doubt they do any research or checks if the memories are accurate, which they are possibly not! They perhaps don't even make sure they are not libellous because it's not exactly going to be published. It could be of use to their offspring and descendants (how great granddad used to live) but otherwise it's simply a type of vanity 'publishing'. And expensive at that! If they do no research, you are right; they are way too expensive for a mere secretarial job.
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Post by And Kevin 2024 on Jun 1, 2023 23:01:24 GMT
I expect they are charging the market rate for turning it in to a book.
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