Famous people aren't the only interesting people in this world. Why couldn't nobodies off the street go to this business and sign up to have their lives written about? Maybe it could be a book. Or just an article. The price would depend on the length, the time involved. It would be just for their personal use, something to pass down through the generations, a history of their family. The business could have a team of writers, each assigned to certain people or families, and these writers could attend family gatherings to gather information. The writers could research the geneology of the family, etc.
-- dredcat7, Mar 02 2001

Biography Writing Service http://www.enetis.net/~hutson/index.html
Standard service, $1000. [jutta, Mar 02 2001]

Self-help version http://www.familyhi.../memorygrabber.html
Book of questions and inspirations (e.g., "What are some things that you have experienced only once?"), $12.95. [jutta, Mar 02 2001]

My Autobiography http://www.ccs.neu....og/stuff/essay.html
This is how I want my ghost-written autobiography to read [mwburden, Mar 02 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

i will do this for you for $500/day. how long do you think it will take?
-- gnormal, Mar 02 2001


$425/day if you pay cash
-- hippo, Mar 02 2001


This is rather a good idea. One of my more treasured possessions is a brief autobiography that my grandmother wrote shortly before she died. If it became a custom for everyone to do the same, I'm sure that our culture(s) would be greatly enriched. And our storage requirements greatly increased.
-- DrBob, Mar 02 2001


Although there may not be companies advertising this service, I'm sure you could find a writer to do a biography for you.
-- mrthingy, Mar 02 2001


You could do my biography, but you'd have to sell it as fiction because nobody would believe it. Actually, I've often wished that I had a ghostwriter recording my life....and I'm sure many other people's lives have been every bit as interesting even if we never get to hear about them.
-- Susen, Mar 02 2001


I think this would be great, if done seriously.

Why do I feel I'm in a niche group, though? I don't care what people think about me, but I'm willing to accept advertising to get my story published.
-- reensure, Mar 02 2001


I think I would prefer to watch a 30 minute television documentary about someone "not famous" than than read a book about them. (Done in the style of VH1's Behind the Music.)
-- blahginger, Mar 09 2001


I seem to remember going to some European city - I can't remember which one, and frankly it doesn't matter - and there were many portrait artists sat around who would draw a portrait / caricature of you for a small consideration. One of them had a price list that went like this:

Portrait as I see you: $25 Portrait as you are: $35 Portrait as you'd like to be: $45

You could do the same here, with the first level being along the lines of "... and then this tedious, unkind swine spent fifteen vicious years competing for the title of Most Irksome Person in the Office whilst simultaneously draining ...", the medium level could be a reasonably objective work, and the "deluxe" version would make all sorts of exaggerated claims about your prowess at various activities, detail your subtle influence on important events, your cleverness, generosity, selflessness and how you're just such a *nice* person and have an impeccable taste in shoes.

[Embarrassing spelling mistook kindly pointed out by PeterSealy - he's like a public service, don't you know - now corrected]
-- mark_t, Mar 09 2001, last modified Mar 12 2001


"Ooze a pretty boy then?"
-- DrBob, Mar 09 2001


This is just ghostwriting, isn't it? I suppose an intriguing service would be multimedia bios -- a computer database and presentation of your life. Interviews would have to go much like that in the film *The Game*.
-- decafsilicon, May 17 2001


Damn...I thought this was going to be an idea about human beings having a BIOS like computers. Now that's an idea I can get behind!
-- dgeiser13, May 17 2001


Yes, BIOS, at least some specified minimal level of interaction to be guaranteed from anyone. New topic, [dgeiser13]?
-- jabbers, Aug 20 2001



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