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Preserve Your Family's Memories
Earleen Devine and Jim Stark
We will ghostwrite your biography, so that it appears to any reader as if you did it yourself … an autobiography!
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LifeProfiles - Front Cover
Life Profiles - Back Cover
You can say what you like, and include genealogy if you wish, but mainly it’s your life story, told your way… for your children, grandchildren, and future descendants. Shown is a sample of the front and back covers of one family’s memory treasures.
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#1 THE OBJECTIVE
Tell your life story your way. We will produce a book about your life, as told by you, but using our professional writing skills. This is for your children and for future generations of your family, to be given to them now … or perhaps later. If you wonder whether they will value such a book, consider what a treasure it would be if your parents, grandparents and so on, going back ten generations, had all left their full life stories so that you could really know your roots! In short, of course your kids and their kids (etc.) will value it, greatly, and all the more
as the decades and centuries go by.
#2 THE PROCESS
Life Profiles has three principals. Jim Stark and Earleen Devine are professional writers, and Ted Stalets creates the video product (see below). For a book contract, Jim and/or Earleen would interview you (or the “subject,” if that is your parent or grandparent). The taped interviews are done in person, if possible right in your home, but recording can be done over the phone if there is a reason to proceed that way. However, we prefer to come to where you live, which puts the subject in his or her comfort zone. After we record the interviews, we transcribe the tapes onto a computer, and edit from there. The total time of the interviewing is usually about eight or nine hours, but no session lasts longer than two hours. We never do more than two sessions per day, and frequently only one.
We have used and refined this system for many years, and not only does it work well, it makes the process very comfortable for you. Every person is a talker … we all do it every day of our lives, and most of us are rather good at it. Writing, however, is a professional skill. Our company builds the bridge between your relaxed chatting and story-telling and a bound book that gets it all, gets it right, reads well and looks great. Anyone can talk into a microphone without our help, and if you can do your life story on your own, well … go ahead and do it. But if you want our involvement, we would be happy to help. (Many of our customers are people who tried to do it on their own, and found out the hard way how difficult this is.)
During the transcribing and editing process, we convert the “question and answer” format of the interviews to a “narrative,” so that it appears as if you sat down and wrote the book on your own, without anyone interviewing you. It hardly matters how it got done, when you think about it … what matters is that it did get done. (We include a small note in the bound book explaining that it was written by you “with the assistance of Life Profiles,” which accurately describes what actually happens in these projects.)
#3 THE BOOK
What we produce for you is a polished manuscript telling the story of your life in your own “voice.” The contract price includes 25 copies of your bound book in softcover, or 10 copies in hardcover. Each book includes 30 or 40 of your favorite family photos.
The books we produce can be softcovers, 6″ x 9″, and these have a colored cover and a glossy color photo section in the middle. Softcovers tend to be 125 to 175 pages long. If you prefer, we can produce your book as a hardcover. These are 8.5″ x 11″, and have a burgundy leatherette cover with gold lettering, a thing of beauty, to be sure. Hardcovers tend to be 100 to 125 pages long, and include a glossy color photo section in the middle. Extra books in either format are available at additional cost (click on the “Fees” link at the top of this page
to see what our services cost).
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In addition to ghostwriting a book of your life story, we also:
* Produce audio life profiles, 5 to 7 interview CDs (lightly edited) plus 30-40 of your family photos in a vinyl wallet with a brass name plaque (see images on the samples page—see prices on the “Fees” page)
* Produce video life profiles with your family photos, with music in the background (see images on the samples page—see prices on the “Fees” page)
* Edit manuscripts or other written material (email us for an estimate)
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The audio life profiles
The interview process is the same as for the book, but the spoken words are made into CDs and labeled and inserted into a beautiful vinyl wallet, along with 30 to 40 of your favorite family photos. The taped interviews are all reviewed in full and lightly edited to remove interruptions and allow for “re-asks” or deletions, but it is basically “live to tape,” as it is called in the broadcast industry. The brass plaque on the front will read: “The Life Profile of ____________ [the subject’s name].”
Your Family Video
Find a copyright-free song that you like (or we’ll choose one, if you wish) to serve as background (it should be 3 to 4 minutes long). Then you would send us (by email attachment) 100 of your favorites photos in digital form. We will assemble a video from these elements, where the photos move in different ways as the music plays. We will post Your Family Video on the Internet so you can tell friends and family members where to go to see it (see images on the samples page—see prices on the “Fees” page).