Herein lies the wrap up. Now that you have gathered your genealogy (at least as far as you are going this round) what are you going to do with it? Publish, my friend, publish. You haven't finished if you haven't published -- and distributed -- your findings.

Assuming you are using a genealogy program and you want to publish no more than a chart or two, your challenge is small. Just pick the format you want, and click the Print button. If you don't need dozens of copies for family members, you're done and your bank account is still in tack.

But what if you have a bigger story to tell, say full biographies of all 10 generations since your ancestors arrived in Canada two centuries ago? Even before adding photos for recent generations, and illustrating pioneer entries with maps of their travels, we're talking a big document here.

Go ahead, select the first ancestor to arrive, then choose "produce book." Hope you have lots of paper on hand. Assuming you print on 8½ x 11-inch paper, using a 12-point font (so senior citizens can read it), you are probably talking 600 to 700 pages (plus maybe another 50 pages for the surname index).

If you want only one copy for bragging rights, and are content to three-hole punch those pages into one huge (and difficult to handle) binder, it's doable for say $25 worth of paper and binder.

Unfortunately that's not endgame. Trust me, cousins who previously stonewalled your requests for information will come out of the woodwork requesting a copy -- and complaining that their story isn't more fully documented.

Assuming you want to donate a second copy to your local archive and need "a few more" for relatives, each copy will cost another $25 (for binder and paper), plus say another $60 for printer ink. And the total cost is starting to rise. (Especially since each copy takes almost half a day of printer care and feeding to print.)

Remember those hard cover genealogies we looked at during the workshop? (The ones on Andrew Nelles and the Ryerse-Ryerson family.) They take book publishing to an entirely new level.

Their authors took Copy One (a Master Copy) of their printed pages to a commercial printer (someone like Second Ave. Printing, in Simcoe) who printed hundreds of copies of their original. 

They then took those hundreds of copies to a book binder (there's a good one in Ridgetown, Ontario) and had them bound. The entire process took several weeks and cost them over $30 a copy. 

If you have $10,000-plus to cover such publishing costs, by all means go for it. If not, you may want to re-think where you are going. Some publishers think every family member will want a copy (which is probably true) and will gladly pay a fair price for it (which probably isn't true).

You will recall that at the beginning I pointed out it was important to define your goal. This is one of the reasons why.

Thankfully, there are publishing alternatives.

The first is typically free: publish your genealogy as a web site. 
Most genealogy programs include a feature to let you do this. Just pick your font and its size, choose you background color and a few other options, and in just seconds your fully-linked HTML files are ready to boogie. You can upload them to the web for free.

The best thing about this alternative is: its free. The second best thing about this alternative is: its free. The third best thing is the real  reason more and more genealogists are turning to the web: it is dynamic.

What does that mean? It means you can update the entire genealogy (or just the typo on page 307), generate it again and publish a revision while the other guy's book is still on press (and already wrong).

Moreover, your HTML genealogy can include all the photos and maps you want, audio recordings of an ancestor singing or talking, and video of grandpa's 80th birthday party.

It can be changed anytime, and did I mention that is it free?

Another alternative: publish your web site not on the Internet, but on a CD or DVD. Only those with a semi-modern PC could access it, but who hasn't got (or know someone who's got) one of those?

If the idea of doing a web site on disc doesn't appeal, you could always tell your genealogy program to print your book as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file, then copy the PDF to a disc.

Or better yet, have your genealogy program print your genealogy to your hard disk as a RTF (Rich Text Format) file that you can import into your word processor for fine tuning, such as adding additional photos. Then have Word generate the PDF.

Blank recordable CD's cost about 50 cents each, and you may spend that much (or more) again on its label and/or jewel case. But one or two dollars per copy beats the heck out of $30 or more per copy to publish your book. And you can record just a few, recording more when and if the need arises.