The Memory Book

Useful tips for how to create a memoire / autobiography or biography photobook.

• Audience - think about who you are creating this book for. This affects your content, tone of voice and whether you write in the first, second or third person, for example:
  A memoire for the grandchildren: ‘Grandad’s first car. He loved it very much.’
  A general memoire: ‘James was extremely proud of his first car.’
• Plan out which memories and life moments you want to include.  It is probably easiest to do this in chronological order. 
• Try and find a photo or picture for each life event. Scan old photos at 600 dpi and also photograph them with a phone app, e.g. Google’s PhotoScan app, and select the better outcome.
• In addition to life moments, you could include what made the person unique and special, including memories and anecdotes from family members, favourite sayings, poems etc.
• You can create an account and share the login details with family members so that the book is a joint effort.
• The minimum book length is 17 double pages of content (34 individual pages), an editable introduction page and the publisher's page. It works well if you include a topic per double page (spread), though it is possible to include a topic per page. You can add up to 6 more spreads.
• The book design follows best practice for the number of words per page, photo layout, graphics and the size of font. You can change the size of the font to include more words, but this is restricted to ensure your lovely copy is still legible.

Top Tips to avoid mistakes: 

• In every text field make sure you select all the placeholder text (Cntrl +A works a treat) and delete it before you paste in or type in your own text. You can leave text fields blank.
• Use word or another program with a spellcheck to generate all your text to avoid spelling errors or typos.
• Zoom in so you can see all text clearly. You get a better result if you use the + and – buttons on the top left of the screen rather than your keyboard Ctrl + or –