I did! I enjoyed it - a great way to do a final proof read, & you get to highlight the kinds of concepts you want people to be able to find. It takes less time than you would think
Yes, write out some keywords / topics you think should be in there and use that as a basis, but revise as you go along. I would also try indexing one chapter first as a pilot before doing the whole ms.
What alternatives to MS Word do people use, beyond Google docs? Today is the roll-out of my university's Copilot integration and it turns out that it auto-AI summarises every single file you open with Word, so I am looking to try and move away from MS products
Have a clear idea about how your major concepts map out. The trickiest part is sub-entries. Worth looking at a few older books to see what they did.
Check your publisher's style guidelines, for example how many entries in a category before you need to sub-index.
then when you end up with a lot of something, think about subdivisions (and yeah doing this thoughtfully is what will separate the good indices from the bad ones)
What I did (and certainly not suggesting that my index is exemplary): sit down before you start to jot down what you expect are going to be the big thematic keywords that need to be there; then skimread through everything, picking out names and recurring concepts;
Anyone who has produced their own index for a book: any advice that you wish you knew before you started?
Please share widely!
#skystorians
Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman
Obviously, we say hire a professional indexer. But you might find our information for authors useful: www.indexers.org.uk/about-indexi..., especially the linked blog posts from @baindex.org and @tanyaizzard.bsky.social
I ended up enjoying this! It made me see patterns I didn't realise I had included.
Wordclouds were of use. I found just going through (word + paragraph number in endless word doc) and only alphabetising and merging the entries after less brain-confounding than constantly scrolling back & forth)
