I’ve been to your web page and read: ABOUT INDEXES

Sheila
Before I met you this winter, Katherine, I had never spoken
to an indexer, not even the ones some of my publishers employed to make the
indexes for my books. All I knew was that libraries are more likely to purchase
nonfiction books with indexes than those without them. And, of course, I knew
from experience that some books I use have incredibly useful indexes and others
don’t have the terms I think to look up on a particular subject.

After meeting you, I visited your website and enjoyed reading that:

A good index is to a reader what a good map is to a traveler. It extracts the
information from a book to help the reader find it efficiently. It doesn’t
recount content, but rather collects essential elements of it under logical
labels in alphabetical order, anticipating the needs of the reader.
Additionally, a GOOD index:

• Adds value to a book
• Is noticed by purchasing librarians and real readers in
  bookstores
• Is written by a skilled professional, who combines in it both
  the specifications of the publisher and needs of the reader
• Has a logical, coherent structure
• Is an extraction of the key concepts and terminology contained
  in the text
• Uses synonyms effectively to assist the user to the
  information by using his own terminology
• Saves the editor time and aggravation and provides an additional free proofreading of the text

A GOOD index can’t be “written” by a computer program. Such a
program can find words in the book and list them, but it can’t decide what
sentences, paragraphs, or pages of written words are “about” and then
find words to lead the reader to that “aboutness”
and relate them to others meaningfully and usefully. I use Sky Index, a superb dedicated
indexing program, as a tool for accomplishing selected mechanical tasks. My own
knowledge, training, and sensitivity are the tools which extract information,
find words to lead the reader to that information and also relate it to other
information for the sake of the reader’s needs and intentions.

I certainly (until now!) haven’t paid as much attention to the work of that
aspect of publishing as I probably should have. I knew someone was hired to do
the work and sometimes their pay came out of my advance, but it’s always been
such a relief to have the copy-edited manuscript back to the publisher by
deadline and to set up book signings and readings that I haven’t thought about
the work of the indexer.  Also, I know my own book so well, that I haven’t
used the indexes often, just the Table of Contents to remember the page numbers
of certain passages and exercises. It’s always been the Table of Contents that
has been an organizing principle for me as writer. Now I am very interested to
learn more about the value of the index for readers, how the Table of Contents
(TOC) and the Index work together and how in book design they are thought
about.

Katherine
I look carefully at the TOC as part of the vetting process I go through when I get the page proofs for a book I’ll be indexing.  It gives me a very, very general overview of the information in the book, in what order it appears in the text, and sometimes it’s an indication of how the author/editors think about that information.  Generally, that’s the last time I look at it.

 The purposes of the TOC and the index are related, but totally different.  The TOC is essentially a one-level outline that indicates the “what” and “in what order” of a book.  The index is a more complex structure that weaves together the things and ideas in a book, leads the reader to them, wherever they happen to be located, and relates them to each other if such relationships exists.  One analogy that works for me is that of an ordered list of directions (TOC) vs. a complete map of the area in question (index).

I don’t know much at all about book design, except what is relevant to indexing. It can dictate the specifications (length, style, etc.) I get from the production editor, and sometimes it even can dictate what happens to the index once it is finished and submitted back to that editor.

Sheila
What might happen to it after it is submitted to an editor?

Katherine
Anything! As the indexer, I own the work only until I am paid by the client. Then it is theirs to change if they want to (and I always hope they won’t, of course, because cutting and pasting can lead to a mess for the reader.

Sheila
How long does an index take to create?

Katherine
How long it takes to write an index depends entirely on the book.  Obviously, the longer the book, the more time required to write the index.  Other factors have to do with how well the book is written and edited (a poorly edited and organized book is a nightmare for the indexer just as it is for the reader – or even more so!), the subject matter and the degree of complexity with which it is treated, and also the indexer’s comfort level with the subject matter.  For that reason, indexers can be specialists. For example, a retired Chemistry professor I knew from UC Berkeley now indexes only university-level chemistry books, a topic I would not attempt in a million years.  Lots of former techies and technical writers index computer books.  I have a B.A. in French with minors in English and history from UC Berkeley, and had a varied professional life (education, travel, art, business) before I became an indexer.  Consequently, I’m a liberal arts/social sciences generalist.  My French is too rusty for me to feel comfortable indexing in it, but I have an indexing colleague in the Southwest who is fluent in Spanish as well as English and much of whose indexing work is therefore in that language.   If I am asked about indexing a book whose topic I’m too unfamiliar with to be comfortable about, I refer the author or editor to an indexer who is educated in that field and knows how to index in it.

To give you an idea of what is “reasonable” and “customary” (which is all I can do!) I can tell you that a university press for whom I write a lot of indexes generally provides me with page proofs for a 250-300 page book about 30 days before they need the completed index.  So, you could say a month for a scholarly book.  That doesn’t mean that I work on that book 8-10 hours a day for 20 days.  Indexing is so intensely “cerebral” that most of us can’t spend more than 4-5 hours at a time at it without a break – and there are several different processes involved in producing an index, which occur at different phases and speeds.

Another publisher I work with regularly does 100-page topical reference books for middle-school students, and I get page proofs a week ahead of when the index is due back to them.  Then there are other situations – multi-volume encyclopedias indexed by teams of indexers over months, or “emergency” indexes done on a rush basis for which more is charged.  The rule of thumb, incidentally, among professional indexers is this: you can have an index written very fast or you can have an index written very well, but you cannot have both.  That having been said, two other things have to be added to the “it depends” mishmash:  How fast the indexer works (some of us are faster with our software than others) and how many indexes the indexer is working on at once.  (Sometimes it’s only one, sometimes it’s multiple – scheduling, time management, etc. are a big part of the mix as well, as for any free-lancer.)

Sheila
This all sounds very challenging. Can you tell us more about the challenges indexers face?

Katherine
One that comes immediately to mind is a book written about six months after 9-11 for a specialized Islamic affairs press for which I index.  The book was by a UC professor of Islamic studies and was a history of Wahhabism containing a lot of Arabic terms referring not just to things but to concepts and traditions.  I was somewhat familiar with the Middle East through family experiences and travel there, and familiar with some basic terms, but these words were complex, sometimes purely scholarly and, therefore, beyond my comfort level.  Comprehending them was, however, critical to understanding the book.

I consulted first with the editor and then directly with the author.  We discussed with him exactly who the intended audience for the book was (students of Islamic studies who were reasonably familiar with Arabic due to those studies or a more general audience who might not be).  He indicated that the book was for the latter – more, in fact, intended for an audience of readers like me.  We talked about the problem, and alternative solutions, and ultimately, on my recommendation, I incorporated a glossary of those terms – in both languages – into the index, because that seemed the most logical and appropriate location, given book design, length and other considerations.

Speaking of that book, another related challenge I can mention is diacritical marks for foreign terms, which can be a factor in the speed of index-writing – they take more time than simply working with regular old English!  Because I have a background in foreign languages (German, French, Latin studies and a lot of travel plus living in Europe) I do well with foreign terms in European languages, and I’m frequently grateful for that training and experience, given the books I often index.

Another example is a beautiful, very expensive “coffee table” book about football that I indexed for another client, who generally publishes magnificent art books.  As I studied the text and illustrations before starting that project, and asked myself my standard “Who is going to read this, and why?” question, it also occurred to me to ask “Why has an Ivy League university hired this art book publisher to publish a very costly book about the history of football at their institution?”  My perusal in the vetting process gave me an idea, so I phoned the editor and asked her what she thought about it.  It turned out that the same subject had just been discussed in a staff meeting at the publishing house, and the same questions raised.  The editor phoned the University and it turned out my instincts were correct, and, in fact, that book was, among other things, going to be part of a fund-raising project for the athletic department of the institution. The targeted readers were all of the graduates who had ever played varsity football there and might buy the expensive, beautiful book for the sake of nostalgia – and of course, to be mentioned in the index.   So, the specs changed, the index length changed, and the index was longer and denser with names (even those seldom or once-mentioned!) than any other I’d ever written, but it followed professional standards in every other way and was exactly what was needed for that client and those readers.

I also have also consulted from time to time with the editors of middle school books I index – because I once taught middle school and so I know exactly who the audience is and how teachers and students will utilize those books.  More than once I have been in touch with suggestions for terminology alterations or even clarity in presentation of ideas, based on that classroom experience.

Having said what I just said, I should also say that an indexer is NOT expected to edit, or proofread or rewrite.  My goal (and what my client expects) is to produce a quality index, written to client specifications, by the publisher deadline.  Since the index is generally the last thing to be written, nobody has time for yet another editorial opinion!  Thus, I only ask a question if it is truly necessary for the quality of the index.

Sheila
But I understand how consulting, if the client is open to it, might follow directly from the wealth of experience you bring to your work.

Now I know there are professional societies for indexers. What issues to indexers talk about in their professional society meetings?

Katherine
Below, I’ve copied about half of the workshops available to indexers attending the three-day 2009 American Society For IndexingAnnual Conference (with a few explanations – for non-indexers – in italics !)

Principles of Indexing

Building Taxonomies from the Group Up
Indexing Elegant Subheadings
Cooking the Book (cookbook indexing)
Using PDFs in Indexing
Chicago Manual of Style’s Monthly Question and Answer
Terror without Tears (marketing your indexing services)
Metatopic Menace (book content treatment issues)
One Index, Two Formats: Print vs. Web Indexes
How to Handle Illustrative Material
Indexing Grammar
When and When Not to Index Notes
Web Design Using Web Hosts
Indexing Negatives
When is a Name Indexable/Not Indexable?
Acronyms
Bushwhacking, (indexing botany and plant books)
The Copyeditor’s Worst Enemy: An Honest Look in the Mirror
Renaissance Indexing (Information Management Specialists who index for the Canadian Parliament)
The Legal Indexing SIG (special interest group for legal indexers)
Getting Started
The Visual Appeal of Indexes
Peer Review
Using PDF Files to Jump Start an Indexing Project
Experience an Index Usability Test
Between Two Worlds: A Writer’s Perspective on Indexing
CINDEX Updates (indexing software)
SKY Index Professional: From Basics to Advanced (indexing software)

Sheila
Wow! I’ve just visited the website and see the wealth of information there–such as information for those who think they might want to become indexers and information for authors and editors about indexing. I am very pleased to learn about this information.

Now, that has set me to thinking about whether there are differences in indexing among different language and cultural groups.

Katherine
I have to be honest here and say that I really don’t know, in any “official” sense.  This question, I’m afraid, would have to be asked of indexers in foreign countries – which I don’t know much about.  My sense is that indexing as a profession developed in English-speaking countries, although I have no real data to support that statement.  In the “good old days” every major publisher of non-fiction had an in-house staff of dedicated salaried indexers, and yes, they used index cards in file boxes before the development of dedicated indexing software (of which there are still only three.)  With technology evolution and with the diversification of book publishing company owners (many of whom, as I’m sure you know, have expertise in media other than books – I’m being tactful here, but “Don’t let me get started….”)

Sheila
I could get started down that conversational path, too–one book I wrote never made it as the company that hired me got sold to a bank and the accountants who were fluffing the numbers for resale didn’t understand the writing division and severed the senior editor leaving my book orphaned. There’s a longer story about my experience writing in that situation, but like you said, “Don’t let me get started.”
So back to indexing….

Katherine
There are four organizations for professional indexers (each with a website in English) that I know of, as follows:

• ASI – American Society for Indexing
• SI – Society for Indexers (UK)
• ISC – Indexing Society of Canada/Societe canadienne d’indexation
• ANZSI – Australia and New Zealand Society of Indexers

Back to cultural differences–I believe that there are also smaller professional organizations in South Africa, China, Germany and the Netherlands, and I know that on indexing listservs you’ll find both freelance and organization-employed indexers working all over the world. It seems to me that the culture and language of the book’s audience is what would impact the way the index is written, as it does here in the U.S.

As to “cultural” differences, the indexer’s job, in my opinion, is to act as an agent between the author and the reader.  As I you know, the first question I ask myself before I start to write an index is, “Who is going to be reading this book?”

As I write the index, I try to stay behind the eyes of the reader, while being true to the author’s content and message.  For that reason, it is always better for a professional indexer to index a book rather than its author (or worse yet, the “indexing” programs that come with word processing software, which produce concordances, not indexes.)  Certainly the author knows the subject matter most intimately (or we hope so!) but that can be a liability rather than an asset.  The reader clearly doesn’t know as much – or he probably wouldn’t be reading the book – so he is looking at the material through an entirely different filter.  The ideal indexer (again, in my opinion) works on behalf of the author for the benefit of the reader.

The best example of that concept I can give is to say that a good index may very well contain words or expressions that never appear at all in the book – because the indexer, like the reader may use a layman’s terminology rather than the terminology used by the author.  The author who wants his reader able to find what he needs in the book needs a professional working, as I say, for the benefit of the reader but on the author’s behalf.  I tend to ask questions of the author if I have any uncertainties whatsoever regarding the book’s content and/or author’s purpose.

Sheila
Well, not doing keeping the reader in mind leads, I am sure, to the kind of indexes I encounter where the term it occurs to me to use doesn’t appear in the index. Now I know why!

Katherine
I know several indexers who have written books about indexing and related subjects – including the indexer who wrote the basic “how-to” text and designed curricula for all of the original indexer training courses – who have hired respected colleagues to index their books and even the revised editions, because they know a good index makes for a more useful and valuable book!

Sheila
What should book authors think about when they complete a manuscript vis-à-vis what would be handy for the indexer?

Katherine
I would say simply that their books be well-written and well-organized.  After that it’s up to the editor, copy editor, and proofreader.  The page proofs the indexer works from are usually pretty final – in the case of university presses I work with, for example, the page proofs come to the production editor, to me, and to the author for one final look, and then they go directly to the typesetter.

Sheila
What should book authors think about wanting from the indexer?

Katherine
As an author, I would want what I mentioned above: an indexer who works on my behalf for the benefit of my reader.  The author deserves an index that leads the reader to the contents and thereby the intention of the book while adhering strictly to the specifications of the press and the standards of professional indexing.  In the case of the books I index, which are primarily scholarly, textbook or trade publications, that means the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, plus my own judgment and experience.

Sheila
On behalf of self-publishing authors and small press editors, I’d like to ask what in particular helps to make things go smoothly for the indexer?

Katherine
A well-written, well-organized, well-edited and proofread book.  Page proofs that are final when the indexer receives them.  A reasonable deadline.  An editor and author with knowledge and understanding about what an index is and what it is not.

Sheila
And what makes for snags in the process?

Katherine
The opposite of what is described above!  A book that’s a mess makes for a longer, tougher indexing process  —  the “silk purse / sow’s ear” cliché comes immediately to mind!

Indexing a well-executed book is a joy, and the reverse a nightmare!  Re-flows and re-paginations are a negative as well  —  the indexer lives by exact pagination  —  we tell the reader what page number the information is located on, so every time that changes even slightly, everything indexers do changes as well.

There are authors who think every single noun or gerund in the book needs to be indexed, as I probably would I if I wrote a non-fiction book!  It’s usually not only not a good idea, but not something the limitations of the specifications for the book allow. One of the things I find out from the editor in advance if index length limits are not specified is an idea of what we call “density,” which has to do with how much is indexed.  “Density” is calculated by dividing the number of index entries by the number of pages in the book for a per-page average. I don’t often go to that length, but it’s something I have developed a sense of and use when I am quoting a per page rate and/or working with scheduling.

Sheila
You’ve kind of hit on one reason, but what are other reasons why authors aren’t consulted more about the index?

Katherine
For the same reason that indexers aren’t consulted more about the book -because they are writers, not indexers!  The author and editor don’t generally don’t ask the indexer to re-write or edit the book.  (Although some indexers also are professional copyeditors and/or proofreaders as well as indexers.)

I frequently work with authors who ask questions about why I have done something in the index.  The most recent query (about two weeks ago) was, “Why do some of the people I interviewed have sub-entries listed after their names, and some not?”  This book was an oral history.  I was grateful for her interest, and happy to tell her that standard indexing practice (also specified in the her publisher’s specifications to me) is a matter of numbers  —  if there are six or more page locators for a main entry in the index, the indexer organizes them into more specific subentries by subject matter alphabetically, rather than just listed in chronological order.  This is reasonable standard practice and is for the reader, who shouldn’t be forced to thumb one-by-one through a long list of anonymous page numbers trying to find specific information related directly to a major subject of the book.

Sheila
Yes, I know that it has been frustrating for me when those separate page numbers are there but no subentries!

Katherine
Yes.  I have worked for an editor at a very prestigious eastern university press who loathes both subentries and cross-references  and specifies that there are to be none in the index, regardless of the complexity of the subject matter or text.  It makes for a lot of work for the reader, and (in my opinion) a very strange and unwieldy index, but that’s what this editor consistently specifies, and an indexer’s job is to give the editor what he requires.

If I were one of his authors, I would protest loudly, as I believe that practice is a disservice to both reader and writer, but I’m the indexer, and that’s not what I am asked or paid to do.

Sheila
I am with you there, that’s for sure.

Katherine
Lastly, there is the fact that once the index leaves the indexer’s office (and that’s usually via cyberspace) the actual content is out of his or her hands.  Remember, the index itself, according to copyright law, belongs to the indexer until the indexer has been paid by the client for it.  Consequently, the reality is that any index I write can be cut, pasted, or otherwise “folded, spindled or mutilated” between my desk and its appearance in the published book.  This has not happened to me as far as I know, but it doesn’t mean it won’t or couldn’t, and colleagues have actually told me they’ve been burnt so badly by this happening that they no longer ever look at an index they have written after it is published!

Sheila
I guess it’s like being any expert consultant. My father, who was a consultant for businesses at the end of his career, used to tell me, “When you are a consultant all you do is show your client how something should be done; you can’t make them do it.”

Although the job of indexer has frustrations, it sounds fascinating for those who like books and paying attention to detail and organization and the perception of how to make information even more accessible. How does one become an indexer?

Katherine
“Ah,” she said, “There are many roads…”.

Seriously, there are probably as many answers to that as there are indexers! “It’s a quirky little thing to do in a quirky little niche” is what I often say!

If there’s any one field indexers tend to be trained in, it’s librarianship. There are lots of indexers who have degrees in library science. Some are retired from or work part time in the specific field in which they index. Lawyers or paralegals with law books, geology majors with geology textbooks, technical writers with computer software manuals, are a couple of examples.

For the rest of this answer, it’s important to specify that I write indexes for printed books. There are indexers who index websites, but that is a different aspect of the field, requiring different training and abilities, and one in which I am not involved.

I became a back-of-the-book indexer because a cousin of mine who also always seems to have a book attached to her body happened to meet a working book indexer and was fascinated to know such a person existed and could earn money doing such an obscure thing! She knew I was seeking a revenue-generating way out of corporate environments and told me about it. That led me (in 1996) to the Internet, where I started with the American Society for Indexing website, which in turn led me to the Golden Gate Chapter of that organization (I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area) and a local telephone number. I phoned and was invited to attend their next meeting five days later. I went, felt I was among kindred spirits, asked questions, talked to indexers, and from there I chose the only formal training available at that time, which I successfully pursued nights and weekends over a year or so while I was still working full-time in an executive support position at a university. It served me well, and is still serving the profession and those who are interested in pursuing it very well. There are other training options beside that one available now, however, and anyone who is interested can find information about all of them on the ASI website.

I’ve been fortunate to meet and know some superb book indexers — among them those who have won professional awards (even book indexing has its version of the Academy Awards!) for their work, who have written the curricula for indexer training and the texts used, and taught both by correspondence and in university extension classrooms. Without exception, they all say that indexing is a “knack” rather than an acquired skill that can truly be “taught” to someone completely. These indexing teachers say they can tell pretty quickly whether the novice has the “knack” or not. It’s not a matter of intellect or intelligence, although those are obviously helpful. You need to be a fast and fluent reader, and you need to have a native ability for organization and classification. You need to be able to work alone and with a minimum of praise, encouragement, or credit (nobody you’re working with has time!), other than a check in the mail, repeat clients, and colleague referrals. (Indexers are anonymous in most cases.) You need to be detail-oriented but able to work under someone else’s rules and specifications. I think you also have to love books, words and ideas and enjoy determining and expressing the “aboutness” of the book. Like most free-lancers, I appreciate the solitude, the relative independence, the self-imposed discipline, and the variety. As I said, I’m a “generalist” in the humanities and social sciences — and one of the things I love is also the fact that as this sort of book indexer, I sometimes really get to utilize the classic liberal arts education I was privileged to experience. In just the past couple of years, I’ve written indexes about everything from football history to contemporary Vietnamese spiritualist music; from feminist scientific theory to modern dance training; from analysis of 19th century British literary palimpsests to impressionist art to jazz musicians to contemporary politics. I also enjoy the “project” nature of indexing — the “beginning, middle and end” character of it.

Sheila
Katherine, thank you so much for this very full description of the traits and life of an indexer. I know there will be some among Writing It Real subscribers who might just research a way into this industry!