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Back to Spring 2009 Conference Summary page
Spring 2009 Conference Presentation
Indexing as a Balancing Act
Presented by Stephen Ingle
Steve Csipke introduced the presenter, Stephen Ingle, and remarked on the volume of work that WordCo turns out annually – 400 to 500 projects. Steve and the WordCo staff offered interesting, and sometimes provocative, information about their indexing process.
The presentation was divided into two parts, followed by a Q & A session with the WordCo staff panelists. The first part dealt with the complexity of indexing, and the many different things that need to be considered before you say “yes” to a project. Among aspects to be considered are:
- How well do you know your software?
- How fast do you type? (Steve finds that there is a correlation between keyboarding speed and productivity.)
- Can you work for long periods without a break?
- Can you handle the proposed project along with others you might also be doing?
- Can you balance this project with your personal life?
In addition to these questions, there are more specific ones to ask, such as those about subject matter, audience, length, density, due date, and any additional requirements such as multiple indexes or special formatting.
Steve warned us about taking on a “Project from Hell” and shared some of the warning signs:
- An unusually large project. (Sometimes the work can be far more labor intensive than doing multiple smaller indexes for the same fee offered.)
- Difficult subject matter. (Do you know this field, or can you learn about it reasonably quickly? If not, you will be losing time/money.)
- Impossible deadline. (Why do they need it in a hurry? Did a previous indexer bail out? Did an author give up on trying to do it him/herself?)
- When you hear the editor saying they are trying to do the index “on a budget.” (Your fee may be negotiable, but this is usually a red flag for the presenter.)
- No-name clients. (Do they have a web site? Can you find them on Google? These questions relate to concerns about their viability – will they be able to pay you?) This may be particularly true for book packaging companies.
- One-time clients. (Is there much chance for repeat business from this client? Steve shared disappointing results of using Google AdWords – it brought him inquiries about personal, family history-type jobs, with their attendant shock about indexing prices, and with little to no chance for repeat business.)
Part II of the presentation focused on balancing the elements involved when you are actually doing an index.
To explain the “cyclical” work process that WordCo uses, Steve used the metaphor of an index project being like a mountain – it can seem overwhelming if you try to go straight up. He said that it can be more manageable to approach the whole thing in a roundabout way, winding around and eventually encircling the top.
In the WordCo cyclical process, little emphasis is placed on reading the book through from beginning to end in a linear fashion. Reading it through is fine if there is time, but if not, you do not need to read the book. Steve gave an example of the possible danger of a linear reading-and-indexing process. If your editor called and needed the index sooner than had been planned, by using the cyclical indexing process you are able to turn in a balanced, spare but complete, index in the shorter time frame, rather than turning in one that is detailed but covering just the first chapters.
- Steve laid out the steps of the cyclical approach:
- Get the Big Picture of the book
- Create a skeleton index
- Index the details
- Edit the entries to create a polished index
An additional point of interest along the way was that Steve and WordCo indexers value using intuition, even just “sleeping on it,” to reveal an index’s core or structure to them after creating the skeletal index for general concepts. They understand and shared that intuition is an “undervalued resource.”
When questioned more about their cyclical approach and about feeling that books do not need to be read in their entirety to be indexed, they offered the following information:
- The cyclical process does not tend to work well with scholarly books or any texts that do not have useful divisions within a chapter to help sort out important concepts or discussions.
- The cyclical process is geared towards efficiency, and certain kinds of texts lend themselves to that process. Those are the kinds of texts they focus on.
- That “the index is not an inventory,” and it is not necessary for you to understand everything in the book in order to be able to index it.
As part of the general discussion, it came up that WordCo has noticed scheduling for indexes is getting tighter. Before they used to have two weeks to complete an index, and now it is more like 5 to 7 days. Their words of advice: “You have to let go of the ego.”
— Submitted by Diane Johns
Stephen Ingle is the president of WordCo Indexing Services, Inc., located in Norwich, Connecticut. He studied German literature at Yale University, and has master’s degrees in German and Russian Area Studies from Washington University and Hunter College, respectively. Following graduation, he worked for four years as index editor for Germanic and Scandinavian literatures at the Modern Language Association in New York. He began his indexing business out of his home in 1988. WordCo now employs eight people and completes 400-500 projects annually for a diverse group of clients. He is also president of the Small- and Home-Office Association of Southeastern Connecticut. Steve presentation at the 2006 American Society for Indexing conference in Toronto was entitled: “Getting a Grasp on the Book: A Balanced Approach to Indexing.”
Back to Spring 2009 Conference summary page