How EasyGenie's popular weekly newsletter got turned into a book

Every week since late 2020, the EasyGenie newsletter has been a part of my life and many readers’ lives as well. It’s fun to share discoveries, tips, observations, and news from the world of genealogy and local history.

The center of the newsletter has always been the essay. These take effort to research and write, and I’ve always thought it was a shame that they are largely forgotten aside from a few clicks to the EasyGenie newsletter archives on the EasyGenie.org blog.

So I decided to do something about it. In 2023, I began a project to republish the more important or helpful newsletter essays as a book series. The first volume of Genealogy In 30 Minutes was released at the end of February, and more are planned in the coming years under the In 30 Minutes umbrella (a separate book brand I founded 13 years ago). I’ll explain how you can get the book, or access the online versions of the essays for free. First, I'll relate how the project came together.

The book is not a chronological data dump of the newsletter. Over 200 essays have been published since it was launched. Many are dated or otherwise not appropriate, such as an old preview of Finding Your Roots Season 9 or an EasyGenie product announcement from 2023. Others resonated well, such as the History Mystery series, but wouldn’t be suitable for the printed page.

I needed to understand what was available, and what might be used in a book. I hired an editorial assistant, a recent graduate of Syracuse University, to make a census of newsletter entries. I then went through them and identified what could be used in a book:

There was still too much material, and there was no coherent theme - as you know, this newsletter can be very random in its choice of topics.

So I decided to narrow the topics covered for early stage genealogists, with a focus on family stories. I then organized a flow that would guide readers through some themes - leveraging family stories, practical tips for getting started, working with documents and photos, and a technology-focused tools. There are more than 30 chapters included.

Many of the posts required editing or other improvements, such as clearer photos. Production also took quite a bit of work (I've made a book describing the technical details of turning a blog into a book). But the results, I think, are worth it. Here is the table of contents from the ebook edition:

If you’re interested in getting a copy, go to the EasyGenie website (paperback and PDF) or Amazon (paperback, Kindle). Apple, Kobo, and Nook editions are available as well. The paperback price $13.99, while PDF and ebook editions are $2.99. If you want to read the book for free, most chapters can be found amongst the EasyGenie blog archive, but they are not organized in any way.

Volume 2 is planned for 2026, focusing on intermediate themes.