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 […]
Juggling Multiple Projects
Some indexers prefer to have more than one index at a time, and others don’t. No matter what your preference, you can’t always avoid slipped schedules and project pile-ups. There are several ways to handle the balancing act of colliding deadlines, and no one way is better than the other, although you’ll find that one […]
“Job Prospects” in Book Indexing
Got an interesting question from an indexing student awhile back. Her use of the term job prospects created this response from me that might be useful for lots of beginning indexers, and editors, too. In answer to her query about what the “job prospects” were in indexing, I responded: It depends. Employment Prospects When you say “job […]
Making the Most of the New Year
It’s unavoidable in January. Along with sending kids back to school, tax prep, and for many, snow, the start of a new year brings with it a chance to evaluate ourselves and our businesses. Articles on goal setting and resolutions are everywhere, with advice on topics from losing 20 pounds to gaining 20 new clients. My own goals are still […]
References
As indexers, we all use our recognized professional references (e.g. The Chicago Manual of Style, Mulvaney, and Best Practices from our professional organization, the American Society for Indexing (ASI)). But those are not all that we should have to hand. As much as I love Google, it is not a reliable reference, but it can […]
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 […]