What’s involved in writing a company history book?
A company history is a book built from two sources, the people who built the organisation and the records they left behind, written so that a reader who has never worked there wants to keep turning the pages. With Laughing Penguin it’s a manuscript of 55,000 to 70,000 words, based on interviews with founders, staff, board members and others, plus research in the organisation’s archives, and it usually takes about twelve months. The fee sits in the same range as a memoir, $90,000 to $190,000 plus GST, with design and printing costed separately.
Most of the work in a company history goes on choosing, from fifty or a hundred years of decisions, the ones that tell a story, and then finding enough detail to put a reader in the room when they happened.
Why do organisations commission a history?
The usual trigger is an anniversary. A business turning twenty-five, fifty or a hundred wants something more lasting than a function and a cake with the logo on it, and a book is one of the few things people keep. Another trigger is people. Founders retire, long-serving staff leave, and the knowledge of why things were done the way they were goes with them unless someone records it first.
A finished history has more than one use. It can go to shareholders, staff, clients and suppliers, it gives new staff a sense of where they’ve arrived, and the stories in it can feed an organisation’s communications for a long time after launch day.
Picture an AGM where, instead of an annual report, everyone is handed a hardback book. People open it, find the early photographs, and start telling each other stories about the years in the pictures, and one of the founders, now in his eighties, says on the way out that it means a great deal to see it all written down.
Why bring in someone from outside?
I’m writing the 60th anniversary history of the National Business Review, which falls in 2030. When the idea first came up, my first question was why NBR would hire me when it employs some of the best writers in the country. The answer came down to independence, which is what NBR has built its reputation on, and which the history needed as well: a book written by someone outside the organisation, with full access.
Independence matters for any organisation. People inside a company have lived its story too closely to see which parts are interesting to an outsider, and some stories are easier to tell to someone who doesn’t work there. An outside writer also has no stake in the internal politics, which helps when different people remember the same event in different ways.
A history tells a story
A chronicle records what happened in order. A story shows a reader why it mattered and what it felt like, and that’s what keeps people reading past the first chapter.
Business histories have a particular problem, which is that most of the action takes place in meeting rooms, law offices and on the phone. The way through is detail. If I know a meeting happened on a particular day in a particular building, I’ll go looking for what surrounded it: the weather, the room, who sat where, whether there were sausage rolls on the table. Every one of those details has to come from a record, a photograph or someone who was there, because in a history nothing is invented. Asking for that detail, and knowing which details will matter on the page, is a large part of what you’re paying a writer for.
Who gets interviewed?
A company history draws on many more voices than a memoir. Depending on the organisation, I’ll talk to founders and their families, long-serving staff from the shop floor to the boardroom, current and former board members, and sometimes customers, suppliers or people from the wider industry. One organisational history I wrote involved 47 interviews and about 47 hours of recordings.
Many of those interviewees aren’t the people who hired me. They give their time out of goodwill, they’re often senior and short of time, and the way to get the most from them is to prepare well, respect their time and be curious about them as people, because who someone is shapes how they saw what happened. In-person visits are worth the effort. On one trip I spent four days interviewing people for a book, scanned more than 200 photographs, and met people I hadn’t known existed because the people I’d gone to see sent me to them.
How ghostwriting interviews work has more on the process.
Archives and photographs
Alongside the interviews, I’ll ask for annual reports, board minutes, newsletters, press coverage, correspondence and photographs, and where an organisation’s own records are thin I’ll look in public archives and old newspapers. Dates, names and figures are checked against documents wherever documents exist, and where two accounts disagree, the book either resolves the disagreement from the record or says plainly that memories differ.
In most company histories the photographs matter as much as the text, so it’s worth starting the hunt for them early. If the book needs new photography, I can bring in a photographer I work with regularly.
Review and sign-off
A memoir has one person to please. A company history has several, and a single chapter can come back with comments from five different people, each with a different view.
That’s manageable when the process is agreed at the start. Before writing begins, we’ll settle who reviews each draft, whether each reviewer is checking facts or tone, and who has the final say. A named decision-maker, or a small group with a clear chair, keeps the book moving and stops it being rewritten by committee. Reviewers correcting facts is essential, while reviewers rewriting the voice of a book that has already been agreed tends to make it worse, so it helps to say which is which before the first draft goes out.
Writing for more than one reader
A good company history works for several audiences at once. People who were there want to recognise their own experience, new staff and outsiders need enough context to follow it without knowing the jargon, and someone picking the book up in fifty years needs it to make sense without anyone around to explain. Keeping all of them in mind affects everything from the structure to the way technical terms are introduced.
Cost and timeline
A company history sits in the same fee range as a memoir, $90,000 to $190,000 plus GST, and where a particular book falls depends mostly on the number of interviews and the depth of research. Most take about twelve months, and longer projects, up to two years, usually include design and print management. A longer timeframe spreads the same fee instead of adding to it. What does a ghostwriter cost in New Zealand? covers how quotes are built.
If your anniversary is a few years off, start talking to a writer now. Interviews with founders and long-serving staff are the part of a history that can’t be done later.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a company history book?
Usually 55,000 to 70,000 words, before photographs and captions. Some organisations want a shorter, more illustrated book, and that changes the scope and the quote.
Who controls what goes in the book?
You do, through the review and sign-off process we agree at the start. I’ll give you my honest view on what makes the book work, and the final decisions sit with the person or group you nominate.
What if our records are patchy?
Most organisations’ records are. Interviews fill many gaps, and public archives and old newspapers often fill more. Where something can’t be confirmed, the book says so.
How far ahead of an anniversary should we start?
Ideally eighteen months to two years, so the writing has its year and there’s still time for design and printing before the date.
Can you name the organisations you’ve written for?
Only with permission. The NBR history is public, while most of my other work is confidential.
Read next: Company histories · What does a ghostwriter cost in New Zealand? · How ghostwriting interviews work · Get in touch
