The U.S. print-on-demand company BookSurge has teamed up with a website called Ancestry.com to come up with an ambitious new money-making venture, one which just might catch on. It’s a book series entitled Our Name in History, and it’s only available through BookSurge’s parent company, Amazon.com. According to the Book Publishing News blog:
The [...] book collection was created using historical records [from Ancestry.com] dating from the 1600s to provide a blend of interesting facts, statistics and commentary about the history of the most common 279,000 last names in America. Now millions of Amazon.com customers can purchase a keepsake about either their own last name or that of their favorite actor, president or media mogul and have it printed on demand by BookSurge.
A quick look at Amazon’s website reveals that each title in the series looks virtually identical: an image of the Statue of Liberty adorns the cover, surrounded by oldy-timey black & white photos of happy immigrants greeting a brand new day. The only element that changes is the family name referenced on the cover. The first title listed, fittingly enough, is The Smith Name in History. There’s even The Zappa Name in History. There is not, however, The Joey Joe-Joe Junior Shabadoo Name in History, in case you were wondering.
