Indexing

[Sharon Villines]

I’m ready to index a 400 page book. Any tips, other than let someone else do it?

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines, Washington DC
"Reality is something you rise above." Liza Minnelli

[Dick Margulis]

On 3/27/2017 5:39 PM, Sharon Villines wrote:
> I’m ready to index a 400 page book. Any tips, other than let someone else do it?
>

Let an indexer do it. Send the indexer a PDF of the paginated book. The
indexer will return a Word document (paragraph styles applied--A head,
main, sub1, and sub2) that you can import cleanly and lay out in
minutes. An index is a creative work in its own right, and a good
indexer's mind works in mysterious and wondrous ways that are beyond the
reach of us mere mortals. The way we techies tend to index results in a
work that is correct but not necessarily useful. A useful index is one
that addresses the words and phrases readers are likely to want to look
up rather than the ones the author or editor thinks the reader should
want to look up. Big difference in terms of usability.

[William Adams]

Alternately, find an indexer who will accept the InDesign document (or equivalent export for InCopy), and a set of PDFs and will work from them to prepare an embedded index.

A similar thing was done for _The LaTeX Companion_ 3rd edition --- Frank Mittelbach worked up a .pdf w/ line numbers, and John Culleton then prepared an index using the line numbers as locators. Frank then sorted that list by line number and input them into the LaTeX source file as index markers --- this meant that when an electronic version was done, the index was live with links automatically.

If you'll be doing an electronic version this is a nice thing to do for the reader.

William

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[Dick Margulis]

On 3/28/2017 9:13 AM, William Adams wrote:
> Alternately, find an indexer who will accept the InDesign document (or
> equivalent export for InCopy), and a set of PDFs and will work from
> them to prepare an embedded index.
>

There is STILL a great deal of resistance in the indexing community to
embedded indexing. Every indexer I've spoken with has made excuses for
why they're unwilling to learn how to do it. There is starting to be a
tiny amount of movement in that regard, in response to the need for
better indexes in ebooks, but it's still really hard to find someone who
is both adept at embedded indexes and a good choice for the book's
subject matter.

If you can find someone like William describes, that's great. And if the
index comes out the way you want it, share that indexer's contact info,
cuz lots of us want to know that person.

[David Blatner]

On the topic of professional indexers who know something about InDesign, check out this helpful link:

https://indesignsecrets.com/indexers

We haven't updated the list in a while, but there are some terrific folks on there.

[Sharon Villines]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 5:52 PM, Dick Margulis <di...@dmargulis.com> wrote:

> Let an indexer do it. Send the indexer a PDF of the paginated book. The indexer will return a Word document (paragraph styles applied--A head, main, sub1, and sub2) that you can import cleanly and lay out in minutes.

Thank you to everyone who sent recommendations. I have decided to use an indexer. One reason is that I’ve been working on this revision so long i can’t stand to go through it again.

Do indexers charge more for indexing using InDesign files? Is it common? going back to Word would be very difficult at this point.

[Dick Margulis]

On 4/6/2017 4:47 PM, Sharon Villines wrote:
>
> Do indexers charge more for indexing using InDesign files? Is it common? going back to Word would be very difficult at this point.
>

Sharon,

Please reread what I posted. Send a PDF. The indexer will send you a
Word file. You will place the Word file into your InDesign file as a new
story at the end of the book.

[Bret Perry]

What Dick said, the vast majority of indexers work in Word.
Unless you want a ³live² index in InDesign that would update if things
move around, in that case check out David Blatner¹s link but expect to pay
more for that I would think.

On 4/6/17, 2:25 PM, "indesi...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Dick
Margulis" <indesi...@googlegroups.com on behalf of di...@dmargulis.com>
wrote:

>

Bret Perry Production Specialist

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[Dick Margulis]

On 4/6/2017 6:04 PM, Bret Perry wrote:
> What Dick said, the vast majority of indexers work in Word.

Actually, they work in dedicated indexing software. The output from that
software is an RTF file. The indexer does not work directly in Word.

[Robert Wexler]

After importing a file from word into ID CS6 Mac, there are some spaces/codes after an I and before the next word, such as "I had". The code looks like this:  ^| when I paste it into the find field, but when I try to search for it I get a message saying it doesn't exist. When I look back at the Word file I don't see the code. It's not hurting anything but I don't like something that I didn't put in.

Any ideas?

[Bret Perry]

I’ve had something like that, caused by non-breaking spaces in the Word
file (option-space), could be similar.
Often it happened with text exported from InDesign to Word and then
re-imported.


On 6/1/17, 9:28 AM, "indesi...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Robert
Wexler" <indesi...@googlegroups.com on behalf of

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[Karen Hickey]

How do I become an Indexer? I know InDesign well (have been using it since 2.0) and I love indexing. Can someone point me in the right direction?
I saw the list of indexers... should I try contacting them?
Thanks!
-Karen

[William Adams]

First see: https://www.asindexing.org/about-indexing/be-an-indexer/

My suggestion would be to join the American Society of Indexers, take the USDA indexing courses --- then hang out your shingle.

https://www.asindexing.org/become-an-indexer/indexing-courses-and-workshops/

William

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[Karen Hickey]

Thank you, William!

I appreciate the direction.

-Karen

On Tuesday, July 18, 2017 at 12:00:52 AM UTC-4, William Adams wrote:

First see: https://www.asindexing.org/about-indexing/be-an-indexer/

My suggestion would be to join the American Society of Indexers, take the USDA indexing courses --- then hang out your shingle.

https://www.asindexing.org/become-an-indexer/indexing-courses-and-workshops/

William

On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 8:40 PM, Karen Hickey <khic...@gmail.com> wrote:

How do I become an Indexer? I know InDesign well (have been using it since 2.0) and I love indexing. Can someone point me in the right direction?
I saw the list of indexers... should I try contacting them?
Thanks!
-Karen

On Monday, March 27, 2017 at 5:39:36 PM UTC-4, Sharon Villines wrote:

I’m ready to index a 400 page book. Any tips, other than let someone else do it?

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines, Washington DC
"Reality is something you rise above." Liza Minnelli

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