Indexes
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Hi everyone, and welcome to the
Launch Your Dream Book course.
Today, we have a very
special guest, Tim Tate.
Tim has worked in the publishing
industry for 20 years.
He actually started out
as a backup book indexer.
He has worked for
the major publishers
such as MacMillan Computer
Publishing, Pearson Education,
and most recently, Wiley.
He's an Integrative
Nutrition graduate
and is currently working as
their publishing consultant.
Today, he's going to teach
you all about indexing so you
can learn the basics of
how to index your own book
if you choose to do so.
So welcome, Tim.
Thank you, Lindsey.
It's good to be here.
Hi, everybody.
We're going to be talking
about a subject that is near
and dear to my heart-- indexes.
As a back of book indexer, I can
say that most people are not really
interested in discussing the topic.
They enjoy using indexes in books
and often complain that an index
that they've tried to
use didn't work for them,
didn't lead them to where
they wanted to go in a book.
I do hear that complaint--
not about my indexes,
mind you, but about
other people's indexes.
So to have the opportunity to talk
about indexes to people who are
interested in hearing about them
is a wonderful, welcome opportunity
for me.
So let's dive right in.
What we're going to talk
about is what an index is.
and how it's important to keep
the reader in mind with an index.
We're going to look
at indexes in eBooks,
hiring indexers, and also
creating your own index.
So first, what is an index?
Now, most people
have an idea of what
an index is in the back of a book.
And there are several different
approaches when creating an index.
One is that index should list
specific content in the book.
That is, everybody knows
what a table of contents is.
It lists the chapters and
sometimes some of the main headings
in the chapter.
So that's a list of
content in the book.
But a lot of times, you can look at
that as a list of general content,
especially if it's
just the chapter names.
The index lists specific contents.
So it drills down to the basic,
line by line, word by word level
and can pick things out
of the middle of a chapter
on a page that's full of text and
lead a reader directly to it, when
the reader would
never be able to find
that by using a table of contents.
The index is also, similarly, a
navigation aid for readers in that
it can direct readers to
content that is in the book
that they might know,
say, by a different name.
An example of this, using my
technology indexing background,
is if you're using a computer
and you can't play music.
There's no sound coming out.
Well, you get a book on computers
and you want to look up how
to play sound or how to play music.
So what do you look up in an index?
Well, OK.
One person will look up sound.
The next person will look up music.
The third person might look
up volume-- how to turn
the volume up on their computer.
So three different people
would look at three
different places in an index.
So an index needs to be
created in such a way
that if a person looks up Sound,
there will be an entry for Sound.
Now, the main text of the index
might be under Music, or possibly
Audio, even.
So in that case, a
reader looking up Sound
will need a reference to, say,
Sound, see Audio, or Sound,
see Music.
So in that way, the index is a
navigation aid for the readers
to find the content that
they want in a book.
Thirdly, the index is a
great selling feature.
Now, not every book needs an index
or could benefit from an index.
But for a lot of books, particularly
books that are expected to be used
as reference works, the books
that you want people to pull down
off a shelf and be able to
flip through and say, here's
what I'm talking about.
A lot of cookbooks
definitely need indexes.
People like looking up specific
recipe items, all the recipes
that have avocado in it, let's say.
So a lot of people, when
they go shopping for books,
they'll look to see
if it has an index.
And if it does, does this
book talk about such and such?
And that item, therefore,
if it's in that book
needs to be in that index.
So it is a good selling
feature for a lot of books.
So that's what an index is.
And the index is a
tool for the readers.
So it's always important
to keep the reader in mind.
And this is important for
you to do as an author,
whether you're creating an
index yourself or somebody else
created it and you're looking
at it before the book goes
to publication.
And I definitely advise that,
to make sure that the index
says what you think it should say.
Even if you don't know what it
should say, the best rule of thumb
is to keep the reader in mind.
What is a reader going to be
likely to look up in your book?
Again, if it's a cookbook,
they might want to be
looking up specific ingredients.
If it's a book, say,
about exercise, they
might want to look up
certain muscle groups,
or certain types of activity,
whether it's running
or weight lifting or whatever.
So the index needs to be
user-friendly for them.
And also, what do you
want them to find?
You may want to let
people know in the index
that there are specific
things in the book,
again, that they're not going to
find in the table of contents.
So the index is
actually a tool that you
can use to let people know what's in
the book that might not be obvious.
So with that, let's
look at a sample index.
I'm sure everybody knows
what an index looks like.
This index, we're
going to be talking
about or using it as an example
as we talk more about indexing.
This index-- I don't know if
it looks familiar to anybody,
but this is the actual
index from Joshua's new book
Primary Food, which came
out just a few weeks ago.
And I will say that as
publishing consultant for IIN,
I created this index.
And I'm going to show
you some of the ways
that-- some of the things
I used to create the index.
Before we get into that, let's
talk a little bit about indexes
in eBooks.
The question has often come
up in my publishing career,
do eBooks need indexes?
eBooks are searchable, so why would
somebody want to go to an index
and look up something
when they can just
click in the search box and type
in the term they're looking for?
And that's a great question.
And I think eBooks are
wonderful for that.
I love eBooks for that.
I'm big on searching in eBooks.
One of the things,
though, to keep in mind
is search terms are often exact.
So you have to be careful.
You might be searching
for something,
but you might misspell it.
Or you might use -ing on the end
of it, whereas the word in the book
doesn't have -ing and it's not going
to be found by the search engine,
especially if it's not
a smart search engine.
So indexes, even in
an eBook, are still
going to be useful for the reader.
And when looking at putting an index
into an eBook, one of the questions
that needs to be asked is, will
this be a hyperlinked index
or a non-hyperlinked index?
And for anybody who might
not be familiar with the term
"hyperlinked," it simply means
that when you click on it,
it takes you to a different
page, whether it's
a web page or a different page,
in this case, in the book.
So this next slide shows an
example of a hyperlinked index.
And again, this is
from Primary Food.
And this is the Kindle index
opened up on a personal computer.
I don't know if everybody
understands that you can do that,
but if you have the actual Kindle
file itself on your computer,
you can open it up if
you download the program.
It's a Kindle reader for PC.
And you can see that all the
page numbers are hyperlinked.
So when you click them, it will
take you to that corresponding page
in the book.
Now, it's not an exact science
because the eBook pages are
different lengths, different
sizes than the print book pages
where these numbers come from.
But they will take you to the
basic area and a lot of times,
right smack dab to
where you want to go.
Again, a very useful
tool for readers.
So I definitely recommend that if
you have an index in your eBook
that you have your designer
compositor hyperlink it for you.
It may cost a little bit more
money, hopefully not too much more,
and definitely will be worth it.
So let's look at getting
the index into your book.
One way is to hire an indexer.
And so where do you find an indexer?
The main way that I
recommend finding an indexer
is by recommendations from other
authors or even publishers.
If you're working
with a designer, they
may have worked with other
indexers before on other books.
And they can say, I
really liked this person,
or my authors have found this
person to be a great indexer.
And it's helpful to
find somebody who's
familiar with your subject matter.
They don't necessarily have to be
a subject matter expert per se,
but indexers usually
have subject matters
that they index more than
others, that they have
a certain level of expertise in.
Like I've said that I
started out indexing
computer books, technology books.
So that would be an area
of expertise for me.
Other people might index, I
don't know, say, biology books.
They would never know how
to index a computer book.
They wouldn't know where
to begin, necessarily.
Although indexing principles can
carry over from subject matter
to subject matter, it is
helpful to have a subject matter
expert or someone who at least
is very familiar with the subject
of your book.
They can be very helpful.
There are also freelancer websites.
One of them is called
Elance, where you can go on
and you can advertise.
I'm looking for an indexer.
I want to pay this much.
Here's my project.
Or, you can search for indexers who
have posted their services-- hi,
I'm an indexer.
I've been doing it for a long time.
Here's my subject matter expertise,
my rate, blah, blah, blah.
And you can hook up with them.
The one thing about that is that
it can be a shot in the dark.
That's why recommendations, personal
recommendations, are really good.
You want to know that
somebody's going to be reliable.
And then also, you can
look at other books.
A lot of books, especially
with the major publishers,
will list the indexer in
the credits of the book.
They'll list the production manager,
the editor, the copy editor,
the designer or the
compositor and the proofreader
and the indexer and the Illustrator.
So wow, there's an
indexer right here.
I like this index.
With the internet today, you can
probably look up that person's name
with the word "indexer"
or "index" and get a hit
and be able to contact that person.
So you can hire an indexer.
Prices vary.
Just keep that in mind.
Some are high.
Some are low.
It's advisable to keep
shopping around until you find
a price that's affordable to you.
Be careful about paying
exorbitant prices for indexes,
although that's relative
for everybody's budget.
But it's not advisable-- I don't
advise paying a lot of money
for an index, what you
consider a lot of money
unless you really, really feel
like it's needed for your book
and that you feel
like your material is
of a complicated nature
where you really, really
actually need an expensive indexer.
Chances are, you don't, though,
so be cautious if somebody's
going to charge you
thousands of dollars
or whatever to create your index.
An alternative is to
create your own index.
Now, I'm guessing that a
lot of you think there's
no way I ever want to do that.
And that's fine.
Don't feel like you need to do it.
However, some people--
I've talked with Lindsay--
have expressed interest.
If I wanted to do it, how
would I go about doing it?
And what I want to
do is show two ways.
I'm not going to go
into too much detail,
because there are lots of steps.
But just generally, what
is involved in creating
an index using
Microsoft Word and then
also creating an index by hand?
And I have "by hand"
in quotation marks,
only because nobody
does anything by hand
these days when it
comes to publishing.
Everything's done electronically.
But there is a manual
way of creating
an index and a more electronic
way of creating an index.
So let's first look at creating
an index with Microsoft Word.
And Microsoft Word has
an indexing feature.
And you can find the
tools for indexing
on the References tab of the
ribbon in the Index section.
So the Index section
is over to the right.
And you see there are several
commands for Insert Index,
Update Index, and Mark Entry.
And to put an index
tag in text, again
this is a Microsoft Word document.
And yes, this is
Joshua's manuscript.
So what I've done is
I've clicked Mark Entry.
And this little dialog box comes
up called Mark Index Entry.
And I typed in my main entry,
which is career, because this
is the chapter on careers.
And the subentry, this is
for check-in number one.
And again, check-in
is something that's
not in the table of contents.
It might not be something
somebody thinks to look up.
But when they go to look up Career
in the index, they can see, oh wow,
there's three different check-ins.
I can go straight to
these if I want to.
Especially if they're already
familiar with the book
and they want to go
back to something,
the index is going to allow
them to be able to go boom
directly to each of the check-ins.
So I've created my career entry in
my subentry check-in number one.
And you can see the blue
tag in the manuscript.
There it is.
And so that tells where
that-- when it compiles
the index at the end
of the process to pull
that index entry from that page.
So on the next slide, you can see
what that actually looks like.
I've compiled the index,
meaning in Word's language,
I've used the Insert Index
button up in the right hand
corner of the screen.
Insert Index, and so it goes
through and it pulls all of the tags
out and boom, makes an index.
And you can see I've
highlighted the entry
that we just created,
check-in number one,
and there's the page number.
So in Word, you have
to just make sure
that your page numbers correspond
to the book page numbers.
So the way I do that, I
just insert manual page
breaks where they correspond
to the page breaks in the PDF
that I'm indexing.
So there is the index.
And then it's just a matter
of-- you see the page numbers.
You have to go through and put
hyphens in between the page numbers
to indicate page ranges.
And then you can provide your index
to your designer or your compositor
in a Word document.
The other way to create
the index, as I mentioned,
is by hand or manually.
And in this case, I went
through and found the material
that I wanted to index entries for.
And I started creating this
index in Microsoft Excel.
So in the first column, I
have the main entry, Career,
and in the second column
are the page numbers
for that entry and the page range.
And then in the second column
are the subentries under Career.
And then in the third
column are the page numbers,
page ranges for those entries.
So when I'm doing it this way, I
think it's more time-consuming.
But you can see the indexes are
being built as you go along.
And it's pretty easy
to edit as you go.
And then it's just a matter
of, as shown on the next slide,
you can copy and paste that
or export that from Excel.
And now this is in Microsoft Word.
This is what it looks like.
And when I exported it, I did it--
this is called tab delimited so
that there are tabs between the
entries and their page numbers,
which you or the designer or
compositor can replace with commas.
And in that way, I've just
created an index, manually.
And it's really that simple.
And I advise anybody
who's interested in doing
that to give it a shot.
Try it for a chapter and see if
it's something that is practical
and if it's doable for you.
I personally would
be happy to answer
any questions if people are
creating their own index
and have specific questions.
My email is listed here,
[email protected]
So feel free to email me
with your index questions.
And I wish everybody great luck
when you are working with an indexer
or working on your own index.
They are wonderful
additions and selling
features to most everybody's book.
So thumbs up if you're going
to have an index in your book.
So again, good luck, everyone.
Thanks a lot.