Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
Ah, page number order looks okay in paragraph form, but in list form not so much. Interesting the difference that makes.
I certainly agree being an indexer is a different mindset to writer/editor. If I was a pro indexer I wouldn't have had to start the index over and over again after I realised I should have been indexing something halfway through. That said, I made a good job of it in the end. My publisher on that occasion 'persuaded' me by saying I knew the book better than an indexer. I agreed with that, but knew they were only saving themself some money. And that's the case with a lot of publishers, they don't want to employ an indexer if they can get the author to do it, and if they can't someone in-house will just do a rubbish index for it. Once I took the job on, I did it to my satisfaction, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to do another one. A friend of mine indexed the entire run of Fortean Times, I think it took him two years. Drove him round the bend, but an excellent index. Again, he knew the material, he wasn't a pro indexer.
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I've had numerous customers try to pull that one on me. "Oh, Hitch, you can do the index, you'll do just..."
yeah, NO.
The indexers we use are actually trained in it. Took college courses in it. Worked at publishing houses, mags and rags, for decades. I know what it takes, to make a GOOD viable culled index. I know everything that there is to know, about trying to survive "indices" that are naught more than concordances (DO NOT get me started, Danger, Danger Will Robinson, Danger!) shoved toward us for inclusion for a book with these world's most worthless so-called indexes.
And OMG, you can hear and see Tex and me rant forEVER on the whole crackpot idea of trying to reverse-engineer indices. It boggles my brain that people think you can just push a g-damned button and Magic Happens. Nobody has to do anything! No typing in terms, phrases, no thinking about "also see" or this or that. No wondering if the Persian Cat in the first paragraph on page 183 is the intended target of that old index, versus the one in the 2nd or 4th para, or...is it the entire page? Because now, those three entries are on two, not one pages?
Listen, honestly, I'd love to read a book thoroughly, twice through and then work on an index. It would, in some ways, be a brain luxury cruise for me. But without being paid PROPER indexing compensation, I could never afford to do it.
When I get a book in and the customer tells me that he had it "edited" from Fiverr or worse, indexed from Fiverr. I always cringe. And it always boggles me that people will send a book to some unknown person, in another country, mind you (other than England, Canada, etc.--and yes, I'm being English-centric here because that's the market I know), for a bloody edit and then they're surprised when what comes back isn't great.
SHEESH!!!
Hitch