Some software can be wonderful, some not so much. I’m a huge fan of Index Manager (IM) to do embedded indexing. I’ve been using the index-import add-on to IM recently. To say that I’m impressed and pleased is really an understatement since I tend to be cynical about how well much software works. The problem […]
Marketing Your Indexing Services
I often have new indexers ask me about marketing their services as they start out. The market has changed considerably since the 1990s when I was a newbie indexer. An entire publishing revolution has been happening since then. Crazy stuff with traditional publishers consolidating and outsourcing various production services to places like India, more packagers […]
Facets of Freelancing
The following quote from fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s 2012 graduation speech, wherein he called upon the graduates to “make good art” is great inspiration for everyone. The speech in its entirety is well worth a look and listen, but this bit definitely speaks to those of us doing freelance work in general, even if we […]
Dead Indexes
I’ll never give up real, paper books (hardcopy) but I love ebooks, too, although I have a serious pet peeve about ebooks: indexes that are “dead.” A book without any index is sad, but a book with an unusable index is no only frustrating but not just plain painful. A lot of time and thought […]
Searching for the Smooth Read
Taking a philosophical turn on the editing and proofreading thing today. The Mechanics There are all kinds of tools that editors use to find inconsistencies in word usage or capitalization, punctuation, etc. that make a proofreading pass, for example, go faster. Since most of these tools are not available for the Mac operating system (the […]
How Do You Read for Indexing?
As indexers, we spend a lot of time reading. Good reading skills are essential. As I indexed more books, I found that my reading strategy changed. I remember plowing into that first book without any thought about how I could read it most efficiently to write the index. I just went right for the nitty-gritty […]
