Personal Publication was started by Drew White in the winter of 2008. Drew's dad, Gene White, had been trying for some time to write a book about his life. Gene is a long time outdoorsman who has hunted and fished around the world and written many articles on his adventures for magazines. Gene was also a murder trial prosecutor, a real estate developer, and somewhat of a family historian. Gene had been having trouble not only getting started on his book, but trying to creatively figure out a way to incorporate all his stories as well as his photos. Gene approached Drew who was a graphic designer to see what he thought about his dilemma. They brainstormed a few different ideas but finally came up with creating a coffee table style book. That way, they could incorporate everything into one format.

Gene began organizing all of his material and Drew began researching the details of creating custom hardcover books. Drew found a few different companies out there that offered an affordable method of creating "photo album books." These were nice but they were too cookie-cutter and Drew and his dad were looking for more than templates to plug their pictures into.

Drew visited Gene while he was still organizing his stuff into an order and noticed that not only was there a multitude of photos, and magazine and news-paper articles, but also an assortment of family heirlooms, mementos kept from hunting and fishing adventures, and priceless keep-sakes saved from childhood. These items had their own stories and needed to be saved and permanently documented as well as the photos. Drew decided the only way to include all the photos, stories, articles and keep-sakes would be to personally design every page himself.

In the fall of 2008, Drew began scanning every picture, photographing each object, and creatively laying out the pages of his dad's book. As Drew laid out each page, his dad pieced together his story. Gene was able to not only describe the fishing jig he developed for tarpon fishing, but show it like it was sitting right there on the page with the tarpon photos. Drew used the material his dad gave him to create unique themed background textures and scenes to match the content of his dad's stories.

Before they knew it, the book was done. The 181 page book included their family history along with original documents saved from over 150 years ago, all of Gene's favorite hunting and fishing stories with all the mementos collected from over the years, murder trial stories, and his personal history with all his photos and keep-sakes. They had the pages printed on premium book paper and professionally bound in leather. Gene's book was certainly better than anything he could have imagined and Drew thought that this was certainly something other people would want for their families. Personal Publication was formed.