How to write a company history book

This guide is about planning and writing the book. It does not cover printing, publishing routes or costs, and it is general information, not legal advice.

Who a company history is for

Companies write histories for different readers, and the reader decides almost everything else. The Society of American Archivists' page on business archives lists the activities a company's archive supports, and several of them are exactly the jobs a history book does: "Case studies and corporate histories", "Corporate, customer and product anniversary celebrations", "Orientation and training", "Recruiting" and "Employee communications".

Step 1: decide the reader and the job

Pick one main reader. A book written for retirees, new hires, customers and investors at once usually ends up written for the leadership team, which is the one group that does not need it. Our guide on defining your one reader applies here as much as to any book.

Then write the promise in one sentence: what the reader will understand or feel after reading that they did not before. "The story of our first 50 years" is a topic. "Why a two-truck repair shop is still here after three recessions, and what the people who kept it going decided at each turn" is a promise. The promise guide shows how to make that concrete.

Settle two practical questions at the same point. Whose name goes on the cover: the company, a founder, a family member, or a writer or historian credited as author? And who has the final say on the text? Both are much harder to answer once a draft exists.

Step 2: find the sources

Most companies have more history than they think and less of it in order. The same SAA page describes what a business archivist looks for: documentation on "a company's founders, corporate and capital structure, financial performance, management culture, major achievements and public image, acquisitions and strategic alliances, interaction with regulatory agencies, trademarks, and technical and management innovations." It also notes that "Less than three percent of all company records" is appropriate for keeping in a business archive, so expect to sift a lot to find a little.

Work through three kinds of source:

• Inside records: board and partner minutes, annual reports, employee newsletters, catalogs and price lists, advertising, photographs, product samples, awards, letters, and the founder's own files. Old versions of the company website are often still on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
• Outside records: local and trade press coverage, usually reachable through a public or university library's newspaper databases; state business registration filings; trademark records at the USPTO; and, for public companies, filings on the SEC's EDGAR, whose full-text search covers electronic filings since 2001.
• People: founders, retirees, long-serving staff, former partners and long-time customers. Interview the oldest first. Our guide to interviewing people for your book covers consent, recording and quoting accurately.

Keep a source log from day one, and build a timeline with four columns: date, event, source, and whether it comes from a document or from memory. Memory is valuable for color and motive, but dates and numbers should come from records. When two sources disagree, keep both and say so in your notes. The research guide has a source log template.

Digging pays off. Dr. Michael Hittman taught at Long Island University, which owns the Brooklyn Paramount theatre, for 46 years before he wrote its history. His story on scribemedia.com describes how, once he started digging in the library, he found who had played its stage, and a claim about the history of rock and roll he is willing to defend in print. The story's stats list the result as Rebranded: "The restored theatre uses his research". One book's outcome, not a typical one, but it shows what a properly sourced institutional history can become.

Step 3: choose a structure

There are four common shapes, and most company histories use one as the frame and borrow from the others.

Hittman's book shows the theme approach. According to his story, he built it around what he calls the four faces of the theatre: film, vaudeville, jazz, and rock and roll. Each face is a theme with its own period, so the reader gets both a thread and a sense of time.

Whatever the frame, give each chapter a one-sentence point, the same way the outlining guide recommends for any nonfiction book. "1987 to 1994" is a span. "The year we nearly sold, and why we didn't" is a chapter.

An example outline

An illustrative example, not a real company. An eras structure with a turning point in each part, and chapter titles that make a point rather than name a year.

Step 4: write a story, not a list of dates

The draft that disappoints everyone is a sequence of milestones: founded, expanded, acquired, renamed, celebrated. Readers remember decisions, especially hard ones. A few habits make the difference:

• Open chapters with a scene. A meeting, a phone call, a bad morning. Then explain why it mattered.
• Include the difficult years. A history with no setbacks is not believed, and readers who lived through them will notice what is missing. You can be fair and discreet without leaving them out.
• Let people speak in their own words, quoted exactly from recordings or documents, and named the way they agreed to be named.
• Use photographs and documents as evidence, captioned with what they show and where they came from.
• End with what the history means for the reader now, not with a list of current offices and awards.

Plain sentences beat corporate language. If a paragraph could appear in an annual report unchanged, rewrite it for a person.

Step 5: plan the approvals

A company history has more stakeholders than most books, so the review process is part of the plan, not an afterthought. Before drafting, agree in writing who reviews, in what order, how many rounds, and who decides when reviewers disagree. One person should hold final sign-off.

The usual reviewers are the founders or family, the leadership team, anyone quoted or described at length, and, where relevant, legal and compliance, and investor relations at a public company. Have the company's own counsel look at anything involving former employees, partners, disputes, competitors, confidential information or financial results. We cannot tell you what applies to your book; that is their job.

Check who owns the pictures and older material before you design around them. The US Copyright Office's Circular 30 on works made for hire explains that a work is made for hire when it is created "by an employee as part of the employee's regular duties" or, for certain types of work, under "an express written agreement" with the party commissioning it. A photograph taken by an outside photographer, or an old campaign made by an agency, may not belong to the company unless an agreement says so. Ask counsel when ownership is unclear, and get written permission from people whose photos or words you use.

What most people get wrong

• Writing for the leadership team. Name the reader and write for them.
• Starting with the design. A beautiful book with a thin story is a brochure. Sources and outline come first.
• Trusting memory for dates. Founders remember the meaning; records hold the dates.
• Review by committee. Ten reviewers with equal say produce a cautious, flat book. Decide who decides.
• Leaving the oldest interviews for last. They are the ones you cannot reschedule.
• Skipping the hard chapters. The years the company nearly failed are usually the ones readers finish the book for.

Scribe Media, which makes this site, writes and publishes books for companies. Its Books for Brands page describes interview-based writing and says "We work with your legal and compliance teams to ensure your book meets all corporate requirements and approvals." The five steps above are the same ones a company can work through with its own writer or historian.