Tuesday, May 15, 2007

How to Make an Index

My husband and I are writers. But, neither of us have had very much experience with making an index. Right now I’ve been stuck fixing up my own index which was formed automatically in Word. I picked the words I wanted indexed and Word did the rest of it. Now, I’m culling through the mess/results adding and subtracting to get it to where I’m okay with it. Then, I will publish…self publish that is. Me? Find a publisher to do it for me? The old fashioned way? What do you think…that I’m psychic? Right. Anyway, enough rejection letters behind you tacked on the wall and even you might consider self publishing. I’m going through LuLu.com But, not until I’ve got the ding-donged index done.

What DeeDude told me yesterday was that he knows this lady who would charge $1,200 to do an index. She said she knew somebody else who charges $1,800 to proof the book and do an index. The going rate for creating an index is evidently anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000. Sheeesh. But, she said he should just do it himself. The old fashioned way. The way she does it. With index cards. A through Z. She said that's why they call them index cards.

That’s right. That’s the secret. Sounds like hard work, but it sounds a whole lot more inviting when you figure you’d be shelling out $1,200 to have somebody else do it for you.

Just suck it up and do it yourself.

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