Three Professions, Three Different Deliverables
Before signing a retainer, ask one simple question: what will we hold in our hands at the end?
| Profession | Primary Source Material | What You Receive | Billing Model & Typical Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Hourly Professional Genealogist | Censuses, vital records, probate & land files | Technical research log + folder of document scans | $120–$200/hr · $3,000 to $10,000+ per retainer |
| 2. Personal Memoir Ghostwriter | Recorded interviews with a living relative | Text manuscript focused on one living person’s memories | Flat fee · $5,000 to $25,000+ (no archival research) |
| 3. Family History Press | US & European archives + your family photographs & memories | A written, illustrated, cloth-bound hardcover book + private digital edition | Firm price confirmed before ordering: from $590 or $1,690 |
Why Technical Genealogy Reports Stay in a Desk Drawer
Traditional genealogical firms do admirable detective work, but their deliverable is written for other genealogists: footnote-heavy research logs explaining which microfilm reels were searched. When you hand a 70-page research log to your parents on Thanksgiving or Christmas morning, it feels like a legal dossier rather than a family story.
Conversely, a memoir ghostwriter can polish a parent’s spoken memories, but cannot tell you the name of the ship your great-grandfather boarded in Le Havre or Naples, what trade his father practiced in 1860, or which regiment your great-uncle served in during the autumn of 1918.
Our Method: Archival Proof Turned into Literature
At Family History Press, every commission unites the two crafts:
- A free 48-hour feasibility study first: We check the survival of US and European records for your family before you pay a cent, and give you a written chapter outline and a firm price.
- Primary-source investigation: Every birth, marriage, crossing, census household, and military record is retrieved from the original archive—never copied unverified from an online user tree.
- Editorial narrative & bookbinding: We write your family’s story in clear, warm prose, place the reproduced documents and translations right beside the text they prove, draw a custom lineage tree and maps, and bind the volume into an heirloom hardcover book.
Frequently Asked Questions
01How much does it typically cost to hire a professional genealogist in the US?
Traditional professional genealogists in the United States charge between $100 and $220 per hour, usually requiring a 20- to 40-hour initial retainer ($2,500 to $8,000+). That retainer covers archival research and a technical research report, not a custom-written, typeset hardcover book.
02Why is Family History Press able to offer a firm, fixed price?
Because we conduct a complimentary 48-hour feasibility study in the archives before quoting. By verifying upfront which US and European records survive for your family, we scope the exact chapters and commit to a firm dollar price—starting at $590 for an Ancestor Portrait or $1,690 for a Lineage Edition.
03What if our ancestors came from France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, or Belgium?
Unlike domestic US researchers who stop at the American port of entry, our house works directly in both American records (NARA, USCIS, state archives) and European departmental, municipal, and parish archives—reading records in their original language and translating them into English inside your book.