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 goes into writing an index. It hurts to see this note at the beginning of an ebook index. That really just says that the index is useful for search terms.

As an indexer, I have a professional obligation to authors and editors to help provide the best experience for readers of their books. That should include a usable index.

When I’m discussing an indexing project with a client, I ask if the index is to be for print or for an ebook as well. Authors and/or editors may not have considered what might happen to an index when a print book is converted to digital format. I think I should be educating them about the process as well as selling my services as an indexer.

Encountering dead indexes in ebooks seems to be happening less frequently with major publishers, but it still occurs. It’s probably no surprise that I also value and use indexes no matter what media I’m reading from. My promotion of usable indexes for ebooks is not just a matter of getting the client to pay me for writing and embedding an index; it’s promoting a better experience for all readers.