I am working on creating a biography of a person who was well-known during his lifetime, but mostly unknown today. When it is finished (I'm still in the very early stages of research and writing) I expect it to be a full-length book, with copious footnotes and all. As far as I can tell, this will be the first-ever such treatment of the subject to be written.
Now, I am under no illusions about the prospect of making tons of money from this book. I know it will have a rather niche market. But I would be very happy if I could make an official contribution to scholarship by someday getting it published. So I have two questions:
Do I, with no academic qualifications other than a lowly B. A. in history, stand any chance of publishers taking me seriously, or is this a hopeless endeavor?
I am distantly related to the subject of my book. Would it be helpful to mention this, as a way to market the book as an exciting narrative of discovering one's ancestry, or would this be more likely to come across as a sign of a braggart trying to bring fame and fortune to his family name?
There are three or four paths someone with this sort of subject can consider:
Commercial press: not likely if as you say it is a niche market and it is about someone relatively unknown today. Commercial presses require an agent - acquiring one is even harder than finding a commercial press.
Academic press: that will be hard unless you can do a remarkably good job, providing context, including a frame that is composed of current scholarship. If you were able to craft such a manuscript, you might attract a scholar in the field who might be willing to write a preface - and that could help, but the path to success is narrow and depends on your doing a remarkable job with this. If you have unique primary source material, that would help. If your subject is linked to a specific location, a local university press may be interested.
Self publishing: with numerous online products (Kindle is excellent) you can get your manuscript out there, and it would represent at least something. I have published a dozen books with six publishers, but for an additional three manuscripts that I did not believe could be easily placed, I used Kindle, just to get them out there to make them accessible for a "niche" market.
A fourth would be - depending on the subject - the sort of odd, specialty presses that are looking for bizarre specialty subjects. Not knowing the subject of your inquiry, I can't provide suggestions, but even knowing it, I probably would not know what the possibilities are since these specialty presses are as hard to find as their books. But they are out there.
Good luck with this.