Life Profiles

Tell your life story your way. We will produce a book about your life, as told by you, but using our professional writing skills. This is for your children and for future generations of your family, to be given to them now ... or perhaps later. If you wonder whether they will value such a book, consider what a treasure it would be if your parents, grandparents and so on, going back ten generations, had all left their full life stories so that you could really know your roots! In short, of course your kids and their kids (etc.) will value it, greatly, and all the more as the decades and centuries go by.

#2 THE PROCESS

Life Profiles has two principals, Jim Stark and Liz Devine. Both are professional writers. One or both of us would interview you (or the "subject," if that might be your parent or grandparent). The taped interviews are done in person, if possible right in your home, but taping can be done over the phone (even long distance) if there is a reason to proceed that way. However, we prefer to come to where you live to do the interviews. Either way, we record the interviews, then we transcribe the tapes onto a computer, and edit from there. The total time of interviewing is usually about eight or nine hours, but no session lasts longer than two hours. We never do more than two sessions per day, and usually only one.

We have used and refined this system for many years, and not only does it work extremely well, it makes the process very comfortable for you. Every person is a talker ... we all do it every day of our lives, and most of us are rather good at it. Writing, however, is a professional skill. Our company builds the bridge between your relaxed chatting and story-telling and a bound book that gets it all, gets it right, reads well and looks great. Anyone can talk into a microphone without our help, and if you can do your life story on your own, well ... go ahead and do it. But if you want our involvement, we would be happy to help. (Many of our customers are people who tried to do it on their own, and found out the hard way how difficult this is.)

[Note: We can only handle five or six projects a year, so we may not be able to start your project immediately.]

During the transcribing and editing process, we convert the natural "question and answer" format of the interviews to a "narrative," so that it appears as if you sat down and wrote this book all on your own, without anyone interviewing you. It hardly matters how it got done, when you think about it ... what matters is that it did get done. (We include a small note in the bound book explaining that it was written by you "with the assistance of Life Profiles," which accurately describes what actually happens in these projects.)

#3 THE PRODUCT

What we produce for you is a polished manuscript telling the story of your life, and all clients receive 15 copies of their bound book in softcover (or 5 copies in hardcover) format. Each book includes 30 or 40 of your favorite family photos.

The books we produce are about 150 pages long (120 to 170 is the usual range), with color covers and black/white interiors, including photos. These are normally softcovers, 6" x 9", although we can do them in a larger format. Or we can make hardcovers, if you prefer. These are 8.5" x 11", and have a burgundy leatherette cover, with gold lettering, a thing of beauty, to be sure. Extra books are available at additional cost (see item #7, below).

#4 FEES

We know we're good, and that our prices are fair, but you likely don't know us yet, so here's the way we handle things.

We know you will not want to lay out all the money at one time, before you have gained confidence in our system and our talents, so we require 1/2 of the overall cost up front, and the balance when a first draft is completed and approved by you. A contract to write your life story costs $16,000 (Canadian or U.S. funds) in total, and it takes us about four months to complete the work. 

[NOTE: Our prices are very reasonable. If you wish to research this, go to www.writers.ca/whattopay.htm, and you will see that the range of fees for ghost-writing a book in Canada is $25,000 to $75,000 (plus 50% of royalties)!]

If you have already written a draft of your book and need us only to advise and edit, add photos and produce the printed and bound copy, we can discuss costs (it will cost less than if we had to start from scratch, but often the work involved by us is almost as much). 

#6 TESTIMONIALS

"Jim Stark and Liz Devine did a wonderful job in helping me produce ... a beautiful and accurate family memoir. Their technique of interviewing, drafting and producing the book was very efficient. They got into my head skillfully and sympathetically ... and they were a model of courtesy." (David Slater, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, former Chairman of the Economic Council of Canada; former President, York University)

"Jim and Liz are excellent writers. [They took] my often rambling thoughts and turned them into a coherent whole. I thank them most sincerely, and I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone." (Ernest Steele, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, former Undersecretary of State for the Government of Canada)

"You have been professional through and through ... a great job on everything ... I can't thank you enough. You have made me and my family extremely happy ... it's a dream come true, finally." (Cecil Redman, Port St. Lucie, Florida, USA, retired head of United Nations' security)

For more on what others have said about our concept and our work.

#7 EXTRA COPIES

Extra books cost $25 (Cdn.) each. Hardcover books (8.5 x 11 inches) cost $75 (Cdn.) each.  

#8 GIFT CERTIFICATES

Most of our subjects (though not all) are seniors. Often it is the grown children who pay to have their mother's or father's life profile done. If you are buying our services for a person other than yourself, we'll send you a gift certificate entitling the person receiving the gift to have his or her life profile done. See typical gift certificate.

The PhotoBook 

Most people have hundreds of photographs in boxes, drawers or albums. We suggest that you get them out, pick 100 of your favourites, date them on the back, organize them by decade, and write a caption for each selected photo. We will scan them, resize them (we use only one photo per page), enter all of the captions and produce a bound PhotoBook (8½ x 11 inches) for your kids and grandchildren (or others).