Why your e-book needs an index...

by Maureen Johnson, MoJosIndexing.com

You’ve worked hard to get your ideas down on paper in a coherent, well designed manner so your readers can benefit from your wisdom. An index is a great way to help your audience return to important topics again and again, enabling them to put your ideas into practice.

The Kindle and other eBook readers offer search technology that allows you to enter a keyword or phrase to find “every instance in your book.” While this may sound like a feature that renders an index obsolete, I would argue that such searches are often so user-unfriendly, they make your content difficult to find.

As a professional indexer, I create a targeted guide to the information provided in your book. I read each page and make sure the content on that page is distilled into main and sub-topics that readers can use to efficiently find exactly the information they need. In addition, I create cross-references between related information, helping readers recognize the availability of additional information they may not have considered.

Readers are very familiar with how an index works. In fact, they are so common to our experience we may not realize how helpful they really are to narrowing a search for information. The four examples below demonstrate how a professionally prepared index is superior to a keyword search.

Click on any of these advantages for more details about how indexes are better than search.

Your index can—

• Gather relevant information in one place
• Eliminate search hit overload
• Point to related topics of interest
• Sell your book by providing a detailed look inside

How affordable is a professional index? Like most things in life, it depends on a variety of factors.

Click here to find out How much does an index cost?

Gather relevant information in one place

Let’s take a quick look at an index entry from a book on health and wellness.

The topic of nutrition is very broad and often discussed without the word nutrition explicitly written in the text. In fact, in the over 50 pages dealing with nutrition in this book, the word “nutrition” is mentioned less than 6 times, diet was mentioned only 10 times.

To find a complete list of nutritional information, readers would have to think of all the possible keywords listed in this entry.

Instead of trying to imagine all potential keywords, readers can quickly scan the prepared index and determine which of the topics meets their information needs.

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Eliminate search hit overload

We have all experienced searches that return a large number of hits.

This sample is from a book on health and wellness which included an entire chapter on the topic of depression.

Keyword searches will stop at every usage of the term. It can be a slow and frustrating process.

In this particular book, the search term “depression” stopped

23 times on page 146,
13 times on page 148, and
23 times on page 149

at which point I gave up the search.

The index quickly shows users how this large “metatopic” breaks down into subtopics. The index also allows them to locate quickly the depression subtopic that interests them most.

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Point to related topics of interest

Another, less obvious, advantage of an index is pointing readers to related topics that appear in a given book. The familiar See also... reference in an index lets readers know what other related information the author has included in this specific book.

This sample index entry shows a long list of topics under Psychological health. The indexer, who reads every page, also knows there is a long list of topics under Spirituality. These two subjects are not the same but readers looking at the subject of psychological health may find information of interest under the spirituality topic as well. Without the cross reference, readers may not even be aware the subject of spirituality is discussed.

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Sell your book by providing a detailed look inside

Everyone has their own process for determining if a book is worth their money. Decisions are made by

• looking at the cover,
• reviewing the table of contents,
• reading a sample of pages and finally
• looking at the index to see if a topic of interest is covered and if so to what level of detail.

Institutional purchasers in particular do extensive reviews of indexes to determine how completely a topic is covered and whether or not it will meet their users needs.

Indexes provide far more detail than a table of contents. Chapter titles are often broad and jargon laden which doesn’t help a reader decipher what is actually discussed. Some sample chapters titles from a home business startup book are Preparation, Legal Considerations, Startup Basics. These terms don’t tell anyone if the book includes information on how to write a contract or how to determine deductible home office expenses.

A quick look over an index would show readers that not only is a topic covered but it appears in multiple discussions, and is, therefore, covered in great detail.

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How much will an index cost?

Different books require different levels of detail for indexing. The technical nature of some content creates more index topics per page. For example, a book written to help patients understand a recently diagnosed disease will be written in a more conversational style than a medical textbook. The patient book will have fewer index terms per page than the textbook. Indexers use the following guidelines to help them price projects.

Mass market trade books (light text, not heavy with detail)	3-5 index entries per page
General reference books (cookbooks, textbooks)	6-8 index entries per page
Technical documentation (user manuals, training materials)	8-10 index entries per page

It follows that the more entries per page in a document the more hours an indexer puts toward creating the index.

A word about pages...

Traditionally, indexers charge a specified rate per indexable page. Pages that are not indexed include things like the front matter of a book (table of contents, preface, introduction), back matter (glossary and appendices unless specifically requested by the author), lists of references or bibliographic information, pages that are comprised of figures or pictures but no text.

Since e-books arrive in a digital format with an endless array of page size and design, counting entries per page is a bit of a challenge. Instead, I have translated my services into a price per 100 words of text.

Mass market trade books (light text, not heavy with detail)	$0.70 per 100 words of text
General reference books (cookbooks, textbooks)	$1.00 per 100 words of text
Technical documentation (user manuals, training materials)	$1.25 per 100 words of text

Note: When calculating how many words of text, start counting at the beginning of chapter 1 and end with the last word in the last chapter. Do not count the words in your introduction, your acknowledgements, or the bibliography. I won’t be indexing those and you shouldn’t have to pay for them.

You can get a quick idea of how much your index will cost by using the indexing calculator below, or, if you prefer, I am more than happy to look at your project and give you an estimate. Please be aware that this price is for the creation of a professional index. eBook Architects will link subject indexes in your books as part of the base conversion cost. See the conversion services page for more information on other types of indexes.

To contact me, please visit my website.

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