How To Publish A Family History Book In Australia

By Tasman Publishers 23 October 2026 12 min read

Shape your research into a clear structure, get it edited, then have it laid out with the family trees, photos and captions before you print a small run for relatives. You only need an ISBN if the book will be sold or listed by bookshops and libraries. A family history shared only within the family doesn't have to be lodged with the National Library under legal deposit.

Most family histories start as a box: certificates, a shoebox of photos, Trove clippings and a recording of Nan talking about the farm near Kapunda. Turning that into a book the grandkids will actually open is a different job from the research. Here's the practical side of how to publish a family history book in Australia.

Decide Who The Book Is For

Before you write a word, answer one question: who's going to read this? A book for twenty cousins at a reunion can be warm, personal and full of in-jokes. A book you hope the local historical society will stock needs more context, more sources and a tighter edit.

That decision flows into everything else. It sets the scope (one couple's descendants, or every branch back to the First Fleet?), the length, the ISBN question and legal deposit. Most families do best with a narrow scope. "The descendants of Johann and Maria Schulz, who arrived at Port Adelaide in 1849" is a book. "Everyone we're related to" is a database.

Organise The Research Into Chapters

Genealogy software stores facts well and tells stories badly. Pick a structure and stick to it:

By generation. Start with the earliest ancestor and move forward. Easy to follow, and it suits a single line of descent.
By branch. One section per child of the founding couple, each followed down to the present. Good for big families, since every household can find their own chapter.
By place. The Cornish mining years, the move to the Riverland, the post-war shift to the city. This one reads most like a story.

Whatever you choose, keep a source note for every date and claim. Footnotes or endnotes don't make a family book dry. They make it trustworthy, and they save the next family historian from redoing your work.

Sources Worth Checking Before You Write

A few Australian sources fill in gaps that certificates can't:

Trove (trove.nla.gov.au). The National Library's free search covers digitised Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1954, with family notices, court reports and local news. Search a name in quotation marks with a town to narrow it down.
National Archives of Australia. First World War service records can be viewed online through RecordSearch, along with immigration and naturalisation files.
State archives. In South Australia, State Records holds passenger lists, school and teacher records, and soldier settlement files, though not everything is indexed by name. Each state has its own archive with similar records.
Births, deaths and marriages registries. Historical certificates come from your state registry and add the exact details a story needs.

A 1912 newspaper report is a source, not a fact. Spellings drift a lot.

Family Tree Book Design: Getting Charts Onto A Page

Here's where a lot of self-published family histories come unstuck. A tree that looks fine on a laptop screen often becomes unreadable when it's squeezed onto a printed page. Good family tree book design works with the page rather than against it:

Split large trees. Give each branch its own chart, with a simple overview chart up front showing how the branches connect.
Use a numbering system. Genealogists use established systems, such as the Register style, that let a reader jump from a chart to the right page of text.
Plan for the gutter. Nothing important should run into the fold of the book. A chart that spreads across two pages needs to be designed that way from the start.
Consider a fold-out for one master chart, but check with your printer first. Fold-outs add cost.

Genealogy book layout is closer to non-fiction design than to a novel. You're juggling headings, charts, captions, tables of dates, footnotes and an index of names, and they all need to be consistent. Our formatting team sets non-fiction with headings, tables, callouts, footnotes and indexes, and you approve sample pages before the whole book is set.

Old Photos: Scanning, Restoration And Permission

Photos are what relatives look at first, and where print quality most often goes wrong.

Scan Properly

Printers generally want images at 300 dpi at the size they'll appear on the page. A small wallet photo that will fill half a page needs a much higher scan resolution. Use a flatbed scanner rather than a phone camera, and keep the untouched scans as masters.

Restoration For Print

Photo restoration for books covers fixing tears, creases, fading and colour shifts so old images reproduce cleanly. Keep it honest. Repair damage, but don't "improve" faces or add colour without saying so in the caption. The images also need converting for print, because a photo that looks fine on screen can print muddy if nobody checks it against the printer's specification.

Who Owns The Photo?

According to the Australian Copyright Council, copyright in photographs taken before 1 January 1955 has expired. That covers most of the sepia portraits in a typical family archive. Newer photos are another matter. A studio portrait from 1962 or a picture lent by a second cousin still belongs to whoever took it, so ask permission and credit them in the caption. Images copied from newspapers or archives also come with their own conditions, so check the terms on each.

Caption everything. Write down who, where and roughly when for every photo while the oldest relatives can still tell you. An uncaptioned photo is a mystery to the next generation.

Turning Your Research Into A Book? We edit, lay out and design family histories, with trees, photos and captions set properly for print, and we can quote for a writer if you'd rather talk than type. Send us the details for a fixed quote. Get a fixed quote or call +61 8 7111 2944.

Privacy And Living Relatives

The Privacy Act 1988 doesn't generally apply to an individual handling personal information for their own personal, family or household affairs. That doesn't mean anything goes. The real risks in a family history are hurt feelings, family rifts and, occasionally, defamation.

A few habits keep the peace:

Leave out full birth dates and addresses of living people. A name and a year is usually enough.
Ask before including adoptions, divorces, illegitimacy, prison records or mental illness involving anyone living, or anyone whose children are still around.
Send the relevant chapters to the people in them before you print, and give them a deadline to reply.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family history, take particular care with names and images of people who have died, and with sensitive records. AIATSIS has guidance for families.

This isn't legal advice. If something is genuinely contentious, talk to a lawyer before it goes to print.

Editing And Writing Help

Family history book editing is mostly about selection. You'll have found far more than a reader wants, and the hardest part is deciding what stays. An editor can also catch the problems that creep into long research projects: a great-aunt born in two different years, three spellings of one surname, a chapter that suddenly switches from "Grandad" to "William".

Our editors handle memoir and non-fiction, every change is tracked so you stay in control, and you can start with a free 1,500-word sample edit to see how it works. If the stories live in someone's memory rather than on paper, a family history writer can help. Our writing team interviews, transcribes and writes life stories, with dates and places checked along the way.

If your book is more one person's life than a family's, read our guide on how to publish a memoir in Australia. The two overlap a lot.

How To Print A Family History Book

Most family histories are printed in small quantities, so the choice of printing method matters more than it does for a novel. Family history book printing in Australia comes down to three routes:

Method	How it works	Best for
Digital short run	A local printer runs a fixed number of copies on digital presses. Good colour, quick turnaround.	Most family histories, from a handful of copies to a few hundred.
Offset printing	Traditional presses with plates. Setup is the main expense, then each extra copy is cheap.	Larger runs, such as a reunion order or a book a historical society will sell.
Print on demand	Platforms like IngramSpark or KDP print one copy each time someone orders.	Relatives who live overseas or want to order years later. No boxes in the spare room.

Small print run book printing in Australia is easy to find, in every capital city and many regional towns. Ask for a printed proof before the full run. Photos always look different on paper.

A print on demand family history book works well alongside a short run. Print enough copies for the reunion, then let anyone who missed out order their own. Note that print on demand platforms usually need an ISBN for books that will be listed for sale.

What Moves The Cost

We don't publish prices here, because every family history is different. What drives the cost is predictable, though:

Page count and trim size
Colour or black-and-white interior. Colour photos throughout cost noticeably more to print than a black-and-white text block with a colour photo section.
Hardcover or paperback, and extras like a dust jacket
Quantity, since the cost per copy falls as the run grows
Fold-outs, special paper and how many photos need restoration
How much editing and layout the manuscript needs, and how soon you need it

Our publishing costs page explains how the production side is scoped, and we quote it as a fixed, itemised price before any work starts.

Family History Book Cover Design

A family history cover doesn't compete on a bookshop shelf, but it should look like a real book: usually a strong old photo, the family name and a date range. A hardcover with a dust jacket suits a book meant to last generations. Whoever designs the cover needs your final page count and printer, because the spine width depends on both. Our cover designers supply a full wrap to your printer's template, including the barcode if you have an ISBN.

Do You Need An ISBN For A Family History Book?

Often, no. A family history book ISBN is only essential when the book will be sold or catalogued beyond the family.

Your plan	ISBN?
Copies printed for relatives only	Not needed.
Sold at a reunion or through a historical society	Recommended, so libraries and societies can catalogue it.
Listed on print on demand or online stores	Yes, in practice.
You want lending rights payments when libraries hold it	Yes. The lending rights schemes need an ISBN.

In Australia, ISBNs come from Thorpe-Bowker, which lists current prices on myidentifiers.com.au. Our guide on how to get an ISBN in Australia walks through the steps, including why you should register it in your own name.

Legal Deposit For A Family History

Legal deposit for a family history depends on who gets copies. The National Library of Australia says family history books distributed only to family members are outside the requirement. Once the book is available to the public, for sale or free, you count as the publisher and the rules apply:

Deposit one copy with the National Library, ideally within a month of publication.
Your state library has its own requirement. In South Australia, section 35 of the Libraries Act 1982 requires publishers, including private individuals, to deposit a copy with the State Library of South Australia.
An electronic copy lodged through National edeposit (NED) can meet both the national and most state requirements at once.
You don't need an ISBN to make a deposit.

Either way, give copies to the local library and historical society where your family lived. That's where the next researcher will look.

A Simple Order Of Work

Set the scope and the audience.
Choose a structure and draft chapter by chapter, with sources.
Scan and caption every photo, and sort out permissions.
Check sensitive material with living relatives.
Edit, then proofread.
Lay out the interior with trees, photos and an index of names.
Design the cover once the page count is final.
Decide on an ISBN, order a printed proof, then print.
Lodge legal deposit copies if the book is public.

Want Help Getting It Into Print?

You can self-publish a family history entirely on your own. If you'd rather hand over the specialist parts, we can edit the manuscript, set the interior with your charts and photos, design the cover, register an ISBN in your name and lodge legal deposit copies with the National Library. You keep the copyright and any royalties, and everything is quoted as a fixed price first.

Get in touch with where your project is up to. A consultant replies within eight business hours, Monday to Friday.

Family History Book Questions

Do I need an ISBN for a family history book?

Not if the book is only for relatives. An ISBN matters when you want the book sold through bookshops or online stores, listed by libraries, or claimed under the Australian lending rights schemes. If there's any chance you'll sell copies to a historical society or the public later, buy one now so it's on the copyright page from the first print run.

Do I have to send my family history to the National Library?

Only if it's made available to the public. The National Library of Australia says family history books distributed only to family members are outside legal deposit. If you sell it or give it away publicly, you're the publisher, so you deposit one copy within a month of publication, plus any copy your state library requires.

Can I use old family photos in my book?

Usually, yes. In Australia, copyright in photographs taken before 1 January 1955 has expired. Newer photos belong to whoever took them, which might be a studio, a newspaper or a cousin's late father, so ask permission where you can and credit the source. Photos of living people deserve a quick check with them too.

How many copies of a family history should I print?

Count the households who'll want one, then add copies for the next generation, libraries and the local historical society. A small digital run suits most families. Larger runs usually lower the cost per copy, and print on demand lets relatives order later, so you don't have to guess perfectly the first time.

Can someone write our family history for us?

Yes. Our writers can interview you or an older relative, transcribe the recordings and draft the chapters, with research and fact-checking along the way. Nothing goes in that you haven't signed off, and your name is the only one on the book. It's a good option when the stories live in someone's memory rather than on paper.