Indexing Your Book

Indexing—that is, creating an alphabetic list of names, terms, facts, topics, concepts, and other indicators of what is in a book that is worth knowing about—is an art, not a science. Although a concordance—merely a list of words— can be created by computer software, an intelligent index cannot. A human being who is familiar with the subject and the particular book must go through every page and painstakingly create the index. There is software to assist in creating an index, but most authors do not own this costly aid.

Although an author may know his or her book better than anyone else, the author may not be the best person to index his or her book.

Because a good index helps sell your book, it may be worthwhile to hire a professional indexer to create your index. And, by the way, indexing is a rare skill. In the United States, there are only one thousand or so indexers who put up with all sorts of obstacles. Suffice it to say that no one should consider applying page numbers to an index when the book is not in a stable layout. Authors, editors, and publishers who are still moving chapters, pages, and text around are trouble.

The main point to remember about indexing is that you cannot finish an index until you have final page numbers.

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Permissions: Step 3

Most writers are poor and don’t have a budget to obtain permissions from the estates of famous dead writers. What to do?

Avoid quotes or, if you must quote, keep it short. That is, provided you are writing what can be deemed an academic or scholarly book. And yes, you must inform the executor/legal counsel/representative of the writer’s estate that you intend to quote the famous dead author.

Here’s how you might open such a letter of notification:

Dear Ms. Gatekeeper,

As professional courtesy and under Fair Use guidelines, I am notifying you of my plan to quote the following passage from Famous Dead Author’s novel A Night of Hairpin Turns:

To be taken seriously, you should be giving the estate rep an idea of what the publishing plan might look like. How many copies will be in the first printing—scholarly books can be fairly limited run (anywhere from 500-1500 copies). What price? Paperback or hard cover? If you stick to a limited run with limited distribution, the estate rep will probably not bother you. Just remember to exercise the professional courtesy you are asking for. It might help to ask for this permission before you have signed a book contract. Also don’t count on the publisher of your book to give you a budget for gaining permissions.

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