Ancestry.Com Introduces Digital Scrapbooking Application

The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:

PROVO, UTAH – October 9, 2007 – Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online resource for family history, today launched AncestryPress, a tool that lets users create professionally printed, custom family history books, family recipe books and more. With this new state-of-the-art publishing tool, Ancestry.com offers users a one-stop solution to build their family tree, discover historical documents about their ancestors, collaborate with their family members and create high-quality family history books for themselves or family gifts.

In the past fourteen months, users have built more than 3.5 million family trees on Ancestry.com. In doing so they have created more than 300 million profiles, uploaded 3 million mostly vintage photographs from their personal albums and attached 40 million historical family records they found on Ancestry.com. AncestryPress provides a simple, easy-to-use way for these users to organize, preserve and display their hours of research in a professionally designed, coffee-table quality book and to share their passion with family.

“Family history is about discovering and telling the stories of the people whose lives shaped our own,” said Tim Sullivan, president and CEO of The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com. “For ten years, Ancestry.com has been an indispensable resource for anyone interested in family history, from the most serious genealogist to someone just starting to build their family tree. Our members have always asked for ways to preserve and to share their hours and hours of research. Now AncestryPress gives our members the ability to create high-quality books of astonishing beauty and personal significance. We think that this is one of the most unique digital scrapbooking products on the market.”

AncestryPress exports profiles, historical documents and photographs from a user’s online Ancestry.com family tree directly into automatically generated page layouts – such as illustrated family tree charts, biographical timelines and document pages. Users can easily customize the look and feel of each page by adding family photographs, changing backgrounds both plain and themed, using drag-and-drop page embellishments, writing text and more.

Beyond family history books, users can also use AncestryPress to create heirloom recipe books, complete with photos and memories of the family members who handed down the recipes, as well as photo pages, suitable for framing, that showcase important moments in their family’s history.

Once a user has finished adding personal touches to the book, they can choose from two simple printing options. Users can print individual pages immediately to a home printer. Or they can have Ancestry.com professionally print and bind a full-color, hand-stitched, hardcover book.

Users can build their family tree online at Ancestry.com and create their AncestryPress family history book at http://www.ancestrypress.com. Web site subscribers can access Ancestry.com’s collection of more than 5 billion names in historical records to discover the stories of their ancestors’ lives and add those documents to their family history books.

About Ancestry.com

With 24,000 searchable databases and titles and more than 800,000 paying subscribers, Ancestry.com is the No. 1 online source for family history information. Since its launch in 1997, Ancestry.com has been the premier resource for family history, simplifying genealogical research for millions of people by providing them with many easy-to-use tools and resources to build their own unique family trees. The site is home to the only complete online U.S. Federal Census collection, 1790-1930, as well as the world’s largest online collection of U.S. ship passenger list records featuring more than 100 million names, 1820-1960. Ancestry.com is part of The Generations Network, Inc., a leading network of family-focused interactive properties, including MyFamily.com, Rootsweb.com, Genealogy.com and Family Tree Maker. In total, The Generations Network properties receive 8.2 million unique visitors worldwide and over 429 million page views a month (© comScore Media Metrix, August 2007).

Comments

[Pissed User]

Is it still not possible to remove trees that FTM 2008 steals from you by uploading to Ancestry.com when you just want to print?

[Patsy]

Way cool, if I could upload a PRIVATE gedcom to my family tree. Anyone know if that is possible?

[Happy Dae]

I see a pro and a con with this.

Pro: exactly what they advertise -- a neat way to compile the information into a nice-looking publication.

Con: nothing is mentioned about privately held data. Will they pull another stunt like they did in September? And as Patsy asks, will WE have access to others' private files? I hope not in BOTH cases.

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[Richard Ellington]

I see no mention of cost, either per page or per book. That is usually a clue that it will be very expensive. Will the user be able to extract the finished product in a transportable format, such as PDF, to take to a print-on-demand (POD) business for more copies? I hope so. After all, it is my work and my material.

- Richard

[Bill Buchanan]

A recent episode of the weekly "Relatively Speaking" podcast on ksl.com featured a company that produces hard cover 1-off books for $50 for the first book.

More info can be found on the MemoryPress blog
http://memorypress.blogs.familylearn.com/

I try to follow Relatively Speaking every week. At the time I listened to the interview with the people from MemoryPress, I found it mildly interesting. But since then, I have thought that a custom hard cover book of my family, using my own photos, etc. might be a good way to spend $50.

[Michael Lamb]

Nothing too interesting here. Other companies have been doing this for years now. Ancestry is just catching up.

[Rose]

Like the rest of you GENEALOGY ADDICTS (!), I've spent 10s of 1000s of hours compiling the information I have. I share freely with family, extended family, and those who are willing to return the favor. However, I have never placed any of my family tree information on one of these sites. It has been my assumption that Ancestry and the other sites use short-term "free" offers to entice people to add the information they've spent years building--so the site owner can turn around and SELL the information to its subscribers.

AM I WRONG?

Rosanne (Goad) Vrugtman
St. Louis, MO

[Neal Harmon]

Bill, thanks for mentioning the radio interview. I work for FamilyLearn, the company behind MemoryPress.

I thought I'd clarify a few things for Dick Eastman's readers.

1. MemoryPress asks for $50 towards publishing for you to start using the online typesetting system. Every penny goes toward your books. If you do a huge book, with lots of color, the final price might be more than $50. However, your first book, on average, will be less than $50 and the remaining credit goes toward the rest of your order. There are per book discounts for quantity orders.

2. Richard, on the PDF, from the FAQs on AncestryPress...
"At the present time there are no plans to offer the ability to download a digital/PDF copy of a book project. You will eventually be able to share your project online via an email invitation or by allowing it to be viewed in the idea gallery."
http://ancestrypress.ancestry.com/Landing/FAQGeneral.aspx

MemoryPress does give you the ability to download the press-quality file. We have customers who take their final file to LuLu.com for true print-on-demand (POD) prices. Such customers only print their nicest copies through MemoryPress, as our books are built for heirloom quality (POD books are built to be cheap, which makes sense, as they bring more profit to the self-published author)...

http://memorypress.familylearn.com/standard/quality

3. On the cost for AncestryPress, during the BETA stage, I believe the price was a flat cost for a 24 page book (like $39.95 as I remember) and then $0.40 per additional page (100 page limit). Hopefully someone from Ancestry will chime in and let us know the official information on these details as they are not readily available on their website.

4. Rosanne, MemoryPress charges up front for the service. No tricks. Read our terms and conditions and you'll see that you own the data. FamilyLearn doesn't even offer a data subscription like Ancestry.