Something indexers often get are term lists from authors. These can range from a handful of key concepts to a complete index, with the comment that “the index is done, and all you have to do is put in the page numbers.” Many indexers, having been faced with the latter example, reject author term lists […]
Tightening Up Biography Indexes
Tradition in indexes of biographical subjects has always been a bit counter-intuitive to us indexers. With other subjects, best practices call upon us to avoid long lists of subheadings under what we term “metatopics” (topics that cover the whole book or very large portions of it), and to make main headings out of most of […]
Tracking Process, not Just Progress
John Steinbeck famously kept a diary of his writing process, a practice familiar to many writers, including novelist Sue Grafton and memoirist Louise deSalvo. These diaries, which deSalvo calls “process journals” serve to chronicle only the process of writing, not the rest of life, and often one single writing project at a time. Grafton opened […]
Collaborative Projects and Working with Teams
At PI, we specialize in team projects. Whether it’s collaboration among the partners on business matters or a larger project involving associates, like our embedded indexing work for O’Reilly Media, collaboration comes up in some form in everything we do. Benefits of collaboration Working together has obvious benefits, like sharing the workload to meet tight […]
Indexing Time: The Mental Challenge
I’ve noticed that book indexing can be a challenging mental task, and it’s easy to underestimate how much productive time one can spend on it. We usually schedule a couple of weeks to get an indexing project done, but a lot of that is just juggling multiple deadlines. So, how long does it really take […]
Indexing Multi-Author Works
Indexing multi-author works can be a real challenge. Vocabulary control, adjusting to different writing styles, and structural decisions are all concerns. The most important thing when working on a multi-author work, whether a book of essays or a collection of previously published articles, is to make sure you have a single decision maker. This can […]
