Indexing a book

axer

Hi,

My cousin (a missionary priest in Malaysia) has just completed a book proving that a site in Athenry was the site of the original High Kings in Ireland. He is getting it published through Trafford Publishers. I have designed the cover for him and layed out his book - all done in MS Word. Now that everything is done and the prototype is back, its time to create an index. I have NO idea how to do this. Would it be best to hire an indexer for this or is there a way of doing this myself? I always thought it was just a matter of picking a few words and then let MS Word show the page number after, but after reading about it - it's apparently not as easy as that. It is 408 Pages long and has 213,000 words.
Can anyone please help or guide me?

Thanks,
Noel.

antoinolachtnai

I would hire the indexer if I were you. The index is very important for this type of book (in my humble opinion). It's a big enough book too.

But you could do it yourself if you were really stuck. If you did do it yourself, you would probably be well advised to keep the number of index entries down to a few hundred. (two pages or so).

But I am no expert ...

Capt'n Midnight

Might be better off posting on the computer / windows forum or on the creative writing one since it's a technical question.

Make a backup of the book and try an index with word, and if it's close then tweak it. You can then add in themes in addition to the words. If word makes a mess of it then look at something else.

PHB

This isn't a technical issue, as someone who studies history I can tell you how important an index is for accessibility for students, which is what he is probably hoping for.

What is required is for someone who knows the book very well, i.e. the author, to go through the book looking for all references to names etc, and jotting them down. Then he needs to put it under certain topics etc.
Its really quite important, especially for a book which seems to be quite interesting.

p.s.
Whats it called, I want to read that

axer

antoinolachtnai wrote:

I would hire the indexer if I were you. The index is very important for this type of book (in my humble opinion). It's a big enough book too.

But you could do it yourself if you were really stuck. If you did do it yourself, you would probably be well advised to keep the number of index entries down to a few hundred. (two pages or so).

But I am no expert ...

Told him that and he still wants me to try and help him as he has very little money and is not expecting to make any money out of selling the book - would be delighted if he broke even.

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Might be better off posting on the computer / windows forum or on the creative writing one since it's a technical question.

Make a backup of the book and try an index with word, and if it's close then tweak it. You can then add in themes in addition to the words. If word makes a mess of it then look at something else.

Thats what I thought too but after reading into indexing I found its more important to know the subject than just be technical. I am now trying what you suggested i.e. indexing with word and then fine tuning it after manually.

PHB wrote:

This isn't a technical issue, as someone who studies history I can tell you how important an index is for accessibility for students, which is what he is probably hoping for.

What is required is for someone who knows the book very well, i.e. the author, to go through the book looking for all references to names etc, and jotting them down. Then he needs to put it under certain topics etc.
Its really quite important, especially for a book which seems to be quite interesting.

p.s.
Whats it called, I want to read that

Exactly, thats what I am now realising. I have gotten him to pick out words, placenames and peoples names that are important and then will index those and fine tune it afterwards.
The book is called (will be called): Hand of History, Burden of pseudo history. Subtitle: Touchstone of truth. It is written by Rev. Tom Connors but will just have the author name "Tom Connors".

Thanks for all the advice so far

axer

PHB wrote:

p.s.
Whats it called, I want to read that

He has a little website now @ www.handofhistory.com where there is a preface preview of the book and extra material not included in the book will be added later. Unfortunately part of the new motorway is going through knocknadala but in the process they found a vast ancient cemetary overlooking the sprawling urban complex. They have uncovered 100 skeletons in the outskirts of the cemetary and suspect at least 500 more in this area but will they will not touch the main part of the cemetary.

The book is indexed (well at least as best as can be done without money). I ran a list of words he made in word's auto marking feature that produced their page numbers. From there he went through the book manually tidying it up and removing entries that are no good and adding others that should have been there. Hopefully it should be okay like this. Just about to send it to get published now.