Tell your story with a collection of your family's history and photographs to admire for years to come. Ancestry Family History Books connect with your Ancestry account to personalize your very own book with family group sheets, pedigree charts, and history timelines.
Wrap up your book in style with a custom photo cover or a luxe vegan leather cover with an optional gold foil title.
GETTING STARTED
First, create a new book project or open the project you want to edit.
You will see the option to change the cover of your book in preview mode. Scroll to the top of the editor, and you will see a box to the left of your book that says CHANGE COVER TYPE. Click on the Leather Black, Leather Tan, and Custom Cover to preview and choose the cover you like best!
ADDING TEXT TO THE VEGAN LEATHER COVER
Navigate to your cover page in the book preview. You can add three lines of text to your cover. Each plus sign indicates an empty text box. Click on the text box you want to edit. This will open the text box.
Click in the text field to add, edit, and delete text.
Click on the "Font Size" and "Font Name" boxes to change the font size and style.
To Bold, Italicize, or BoldItalic text, you must select a font type that ends with - Bold, - Italic, - SemiBold, - BoldItalic, or - SemiBoldItalic. There is no bold or italic button like you would find in a word processing program.
Finally, click the "Done" button to save your edits.
Please note that if a red box appears around your text when you are finished, your title is too long or too large and will get cut short in production.
You can fix this by decreasing the font size of your text or truncating the content until the red box no longer appears.
EDITING THE CUSTOM COVER BACKGROUND
Navigate to the cover page in the book preview. Click on it to open the editor.
You are now in the cover editor. Our editor allows you to customize your cover with photos, text, embellishments, and colors.
Note: The back of the custom cover cannot be edited and will be published with a creamy white background.
You can change the background color of the cover by adding a rectangle element. Go to the Elements tab in the toolbar, then click Rectangle. A rectangle will appear on your cover page.
Click the paint bucket icon at the top of the editor to change its color. You can choose one of the color swatches or use the slider to pick a new color. You can also enter a HEX code and RGB values.
Next, click and drag on the white squares around the rectangle to fit it to the entire cover page. Be sure to extend the color beyond the pink border.
Perhaps you have already added photos or text, and the rectangle is now covering up those objects. Select the rectangle, then go to Position in the top-right toolbar and send it to the bottom.
Once you are satisfied with your background color and position, we recommend locking it in place to avoid accidentally moving it while you add your photo(s) and text.
To learn more about adding text to your custom cover, see Editing the Text in Your Family History Project.
To learn more about adding photos to your custom cover, see Editing the Photos in Your Family History Project.
To learn more about adding embellishments to your custom cover, see Customizing Your Family History Project with Embellishments.
To learn more about adding line and rectangle elements to your custom cover, see Customizing Your Family History Project with Line and Rectangle Elements.
You'll see a pink border around the page when editing your custom cover. If you hover your mouse over the border, you'll see the message, "Items in the shaded area may be cut off."
Note: Anything in the shaded area may get cut off in production or fall into the bookbinding. We print ordered projects as you've created them, so please check for typos, correctness, and layout.
Here's information on the bleed zone.
Check out these articles next:
Watch the video below to see one of our team members turn the default photo cover into their own custom design.