Information for authors

Has your publisher asked you to provide an index for your book, or are you self-publishing? If you've never worked with an indexer before, here's what you need to know.

Why do I need an index?  1  2  3
How the presence of a good index helps your book, your readers, and your sales

Why hire a professional?  1  2  3  4 (PDF file)
Visit these links to read about what a professional can bring to your project, and why computer-produced indexes and electronic full-text search are not enough. For an author's perspective, see this post from the Chronicle of Higher Education blog and Tim Brookes's appreciation, What About the Worthy Indexer?

The process
Working with an indexer should be a straightforward, easy process for authors. First, we'll discuss your project and I'll give you a cost estimate, based on your description of the book. Whenever you have sample pages in final page-design format, you can email me PDFs of a chapter or two plus the table of contents, and I'll give you a firm price quote.   Rate information

Your publisher will probably have house indexing guidelines. If not, we'll need to agree on format and style - the look of the index. The simplest way to do this is for you to send me an example of an index whose format you want me to emulate.

Indexing is usually the last step in the production process before your book goes to the printer - because ideally, indexers need to work from final (or close-to-final) pages. If book design changes cause text reflow after indexing is done, it can be difficult and expensive to revise the index accordingly.     continued >>