One Thing Has Led to Another

In my last post, I explained how I jump-started Memoirs Unlimited with networking and how I soon realized that I had found my “sweet spot.” This time, I'd like to recall how that first memoir, for “Mr. Carter,” led to more than sixty projects over the past twenty years.

The simple explanation is, One thing led to another.

Memoirs Unlimited: A New Business Model

In 1988, with a new family (wife Katie plus two daughters, two-year-old Martha and four-month-old Marian) I decided to go into business for myself as a writer. I had writing experience, but no one I knew had ever applied writing to the business I had in mind.

I had decided to be what amounts to a ghostwriter and publisher for privately published memoirs. I would interview you (or your parent or grandparent); edit those interviews into a coherent first-person narrative; then publish a private edition with any features desired (hardcover? dust-jacket? photos?). Press runs would be as long or as short as you wanted: one thousand, one hundred, ten?

How Memoirs Unlimited began

My grandfather, Daniel Bull, was the son of the founder of the Cream of Wheat Company. Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1886, Granddad stood at his father's deathbed when he was just eleven years old and heard his father say, "You're the man of the family now, Dan." Granddad took this to heart, caring for his mother and two sisters as well as he could. Trained as an engineer, he was asked to take over management of Cream of Wheat at the end of World War I. He ran the company at its Minneapolis headquarters until the late 1950s, when my father, Dave Bull, took over. In 1961, Cream of Wheat was sold to Nabisco and our family moved to suburban Connecticut so that Dad could go to work for the NYC-based cookie and cracker company.