(MONEY Magazine) – You don't have to be a former President or a sports legend to have a book written about you. For as little as $400, you can hire a personal historian to record your life story (or perhaps a parent's) as a book, video or CD-ROM. To find a willing scribe, visit the website of the 250-member Association of Personal Historians (www .personalhistorians.org).

Although $400 will buy you little more than a video or a quick edit of your own written memoirs, a more thorough job is surprisingly reasonable: Books of 100 pages or so can cost just $5,000. If you want a 450-page leather-bound volume, you could pay up to $50,000--and the tome could take a full year to produce, during which time the historian-for-hire would do several interviews and weave in old photos, maps and other family documents.

So who has the best stories to tell? Kitty Axelson-Berry, a personal historian in Amherst, Mass., says self-made businesspeople are among the most intriguing. Bob Joyce, president of the Association of Personal Historians, may have her beat: He just completed a 175-page memoir for a 60-year-old dominatrix.

--KELLY SMITH