Information for Authors

Until now, indexing choices for authors have been easy; if you have to pay for it, you either do it yourself or hire an indexer (whether qualified or not). If your publisher pays for it, you decide whether you can trust them to find a good indexer and then relax.

Recently it's suddenly got harder. Ebooks are being published with indexes that simply don't work: books are being merged and chopped up with no concern for accessibility. A model developed for light fiction is being asked to serve for academic publishing, simply because it's available.

These days, you need to take more care for your reputation, and that means getting involved.

Many reputable publishers have been caught out by the speed of ebook development. They haven't even sorted copyright, illustrations, margins... so they've certainly not given much thought to reader access and many have just handed the problem to IT departments, some of which have turned to discredited solutions. The usual one is searching for word occurrences.

It's still usually a very bad idea to index your own book.

If you wish to commission an indexer, visit Indexers Available on the Society of Indexers website.