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The Importance Of Indexing For Nonfiction Authors: The Self-Publishing With ALLi Podcast Featuring Anna Featherstone

The Importance of Indexing for Nonfiction Authors: The Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast Featuring Anna Featherstone

In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Anna Featherstone speaks with professional indexer Madeleine Davis, president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers. Together, they explore the critical role of indexes in nonfiction books, discussing why authors should consider investing in professional indexing, the process of creating an index, and how a great index can enhance the usability and longevity of a book. Davis also shares fascinating insights from her career, tips for working with indexers, and even some lighthearted moments from the world of indexing.

Listen to the Podcast: The Importance of Indexing for Nonfiction Authors

On the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Anna Featherstone talks with professional indexer Madeleine Davis about the importance of indexes in nonfiction books. Share on X

Show Notes

Links to indexing organizations around the world and information about hiring an indexer.

Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?

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About the Host

Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.

About the Guest

Madeleine Davis is the president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) and has been a professional indexer since 1994. She has provided back-of-book indexes for trade publishers and university publishers for general, academic, textbooks, and legal publications. She has also given presentations about indexing at various international indexing conferences and seminars and has had articles published in The Indexer, a journal published on behalf of indexing societies worldwide.

Read the Transcripts

Anna Featherstone: Welcome from wherever you are in the world and whatever writing project you're working on. I'm Anna Featherstone, author, mentor, and ALLi's non-fiction advisor.

Today's podcast is being recorded on the beautiful traditional lands of the Burr Pipe people on the East Coast of Australia, and with me today is Madeleine Davis, president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much, Anna, for having me. Yeah, and this is a global podcast, and even though you represent Australia and New Zealand indexers, all the things you have to say today pretty much apply all around the world. So, it's great that you're here to help us with the whole area that is indexing.

So, what is a book index and what is its purpose?

Madeleine Davis: An index at the end of the book is really an alphabetical list of names, places, topics, and concepts, along with what we call locators, page references or page numbers, and where these things appear. An index's purpose is to help the readers quickly find information in a book.

An index is not a concordance, that is an alphabetical list of all the main words found in a text, that kind of a list which can be done electronically, and can be done in Word, Microsoft Word, it just simply lacks analysis of the main topics and any synthesis of ideas or concepts.

An index is also not a more elaborate version of a table of contents. So, the table of contents gives you the overall arching structure of a book. The index gives you the analysis by subject of all the information in that book.

Let me give you a couple of examples of why an index is important. I did a biography of John Curtin. The table of contents, each heading was a quote, gave you no idea what the chapter was about.

Ditto, I did a bio of Paul Keating, there was no table of contents at all.

Anna Featherstone: And for people who don't know, that's an Australian Prime Minister.

Madeleine Davis: Sorry, yes, an Australian Prime Minister. There was no table of contents at all, it just went straight into chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3. So, the index was there to elaborate, to give the user, the reader, a snapshot of all the things that were covered in the book; the people, the events, the politics, the policies, and how much emphasis there was on any of these things.

The index is also not just an outline of the book, because what it does is highlight where the author has placed importance so that if there are lots of references, page references to a topic, if there are lots of subheadings, you know that that's where a major discussion exists and so on.

Anna Featherstone: Absolutely love indexes in books. I was like having to pack up a bookcase recently and I realized that most of the books I decided to keep had indexes. They help me scan things, find what I'm looking for really quickly, and also, they show that a comprehensive approach has been taken to the book.

So, I'm a huge index fan, which is why I'm so excited that you're here with us today.

Madeleine Davis: You've just highlighted something. It's a reference tool. You read the book, you put it aside, you go, oh, where was that reference? Blah, blah, blah. You look up the index, you find it again. So, the index lets you go back and back and back into the book.

The other thing it is, which is probably most important is browsability. You browse through and you go, oh, this is what it's about, or this is what it's about. It's just something that you can look at first, even before you start the book.

There's something that indexers call the Washington Read and it emanated from U. S. politics, where a politician or a history book, a contemporary history book is written, and the book is published and it's on the bookshelves, and the politicians and the journalists rush to the book, flip to the index to see if they're in it.

Anna Featherstone: I love that.

So, what kind of books and readers benefit most from an index?

Madeleine Davis: Any books, self-help books history books, of course, biographies, cookbooks anything that people need to refer to again and again, or to see what it's about.

I have even heard of fiction books being indexed, and I've seen that there's an index to the Lord of the Rings, and so forth.

Mainly it's non-fiction, it's academic, it's trade books. Self-help books, building books, anything that covers a vast area of topics.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, so when I've been doing my non-fiction books, I found I've included an index for many of them, but for my memoir, it wasn't the type of memoir that I thought needed one, so I didn't, but I've seen a lot of memoirs do have indexes, especially when they're bringing in outside experts or particular themes, they do add an index as well.

Madeleine Davis: It's funny you should say that because I specialize in biography, memoirs and things like that. I recently went to a bookshop, found a biography of someone with whom I went to university. No names. No index. And I went, oh my God, it was the seventies. It was the Vietnam moratoriums. It was the music, the rock and roll bands, the clothes we wore. None of it was covered.

Yes, I flipped through the chapters, and it was in the chapters, and it wasn't covered in the index.

I think sometimes authors don't realize how important it is that the era that they're living in might usefully be looked at later and then an index is perfect for that.

You might not think it's so important, but someone referring to your book to see what happened in your era might go, damn, there's no index.

Anna Featherstone: Wow. So, is there much variance between countries in how indexes are created?

Madeleine Davis: No. We have indexing societies in the U.S., in Canada, in the U. K, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Australia, in New Zealand, South Africa.

So, all those Western countries, we all do basically the same kind of training. There's no variance. I can index a book for an American author, they can index a book for an Australian, and so on. There is a Chinese society of indexes, and it's very large, but they obviously do it in their own language and so on.

So, any Western indexing society, any indexer from any of the Western countries can index any books, and we all do basically the same training.

Anna Featherstone: We will include links to those organisations in the show notes as well for any listeners who want to look up your local indexers.

So, why do you suggest non-fiction authors invest the time or the money in an index?

Madeleine Davis: A professionally compiled index is usually clear, comprehensive and consistent in style. It includes headings, it includes subheadings so that you won't get a heading with 20 references, but they'll be broken down into logical and clear subheadings. It connects headings with see and see-also references. If you're interested in this, why don't you look at this related topic here or here or here.

Mostly though, indexes will bring an unbiased approach to the text. Impartiality, objectivity are paramount. Indexes are pointing to topics and events and people, but we're not arbiters of what the author is actually saying about someone or about an event or something that might be implied in the text.

So, we're completely objective, and the other thing is indexers always have the user, the reader, in mind, and sometimes the author may not be able to stand back and say, as an indexer would say, okay, this is the subject in the book, but maybe a reader will look up this word and I can link it back to here. Or maybe the reader will be more interested in this subject, so I'll put it under here. We always have the user in mind, so we'll sometimes put in synonyms and words like this so that whatever they're looking for, we can point it out, and I'm not sure whether every author can be objective.

Anna Featherstone: I think that's a really great point.

I tried to index one of my books and I just felt, I am way too close to this. So, I did get a professional from your organization to help with that, but also at the time I actually needed to save some money as well. So, I suggested that if I indexed the names and company names, so the really easy things, and then the indexer actually did all those concepts and themes and the see-also's, and it just was such a great index in the end. It was like, oh my gosh, I could never have achieved that.

Madeleine Davis: I've had a few authors who have come to me and said, look, here's a list of the things I want indexed.

I'm happy to incorporate that, and I'm happy to discuss with them, when I've done some of the index, do you want this highlighted? Do you want that highlighted? But for the author to come through with a list of things, that's terrific.

But we can also, we can also check your list and see whether you've left anything out, whether you want to add anything, or we can do subheadings underneath it and expand it a bit.

Anna Featherstone: So, are there different specialties that you indexers have? Like, does someone only index university lecturer books?

Madeleine Davis: There are specialties in terms of formats. So, there are indexers who do databases and newspaper and journal indexes and website indexes, and so on.

In terms of back of book, there are a few specialties. There's legal, there's medical, scientific, but generally most indexers can index across the humanities, across all the trade books, all the self-help books, anything that you can think of. Most indexers can do that because basically we've probably had a very general education, university education, humanities and arts and things like that.

I've only ever rejected one book, and it was an arcane tome on ancient Jewish philosophy. I read a few chapters, and I went, I really don't understand this, and so I passed it on to someone who kind of specialized in religious studies. But generally, we can do anything.

Anna Featherstone: So, what stage is it best for an author to get in touch with an indexer? So, we're talking about self-published authors. Where along the line should they start getting in touch? How early to book someone in, but also whereabouts in the project should they be? Should it be a finished manuscript?

Madeleine Davis: It's really useful to get in touch with the indexer as early as possible, but only to the point that they can say, okay, this is the schedule, the editor's going to finish at this time, the publisher will want to print it at this time, so that there's an end date.

But we indexers know that anything can happen. There are usually delays and delays and delays. So, as long as the indexer has some idea of when the final manuscript will be ready, then they can slot it in, knowing that there will always be some problem, usually some problem. The fixed date is the printer, and as close as you get to that publishing point, the indexer has to know as soon as possible.

So, the author should keep talking with the indexer. The indexer can only start when the final proof pages are ready. No more editing, all laid out, just before it goes to the printer. Then the indexer can actually start.

Sometimes authors want to send a manuscript that isn't in its final stages and that's not particularly useful because if the page ranges change, then you have to go through the whole thing again.

Anna Featherstone: It's funny because when I look to go back and maybe redo a book or re-launch it in a certain way and I want to add in another page, I'm like, oh, I've got to think, how do I keep it within this exact page range, so I don't change any of that index.

So, what do indexers need to be able to provide a quote?

Madeleine Davis: So, at that first early stage, it's fine for the author to send a couple of chapters, say the introduction, a couple of chapters, or two or three chapters throughout the book. They don't have to be the final at all. They don't have to be the edited version. It's just so the indexer can get an idea of how dense the information on the page is. Are there a lot of references per page? Are there a lot of people, events, ideas, you know?

The more references per page, the longer it's going to take.

Some indexers quote by the number of references per page. Some indexers quote by the hour, how long they think it's going to take them to finish the whole thing. The author needs to also let the indexer know approximately how many words it's going to be, how many pages it's going to be, and then they can provide a quote.

It doesn't have to be the file manuscript at all, it can be just sample chapters.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, okay, and so once the quote's been accepted, how long does the process take?

Madeleine Davis: If there's time, it's wonderful for the indexer to be able to read the whole manuscript through, but there's never usually that time. It's usually a race to the end. So, I would start by reading the introduction and the conclusion, figure out what the main topics are, and then simply start page by page by page. Listing, entering things into the index with the page references.

It's usually a PDF that we work on. Searching through the PDF to see how many more references there are to that particular person or event.

There comes a time about halfway through the index, which I call the Eureka moment, because then you go, OK, the structure of the index is in place, and everything is falling in under the right headings and so on. Then you can kind of finish it logically. It's logical, it's consistent, it's starting to fall into place.

But at the beginning it's really haphazard, but you get there.

So, then after you've indexed everything you possibly can, you edit the index. Is it logical? Is it consistent? Are the see references there? Are the see-also references there? Does it make sense reading through? So, it's a fairly long editing process at the end as well.

Oh, last thing. Will it fit the number of pages that have been allowed for the index?

This is something I should have mentioned earlier. So, when providing a quote, when discussing things with the author, it's really useful to know how many pages have been left in the design for the number of pages for the index.

Anna Featherstone: Because if they're only leaving four pages compared to 12.

Madeleine Davis: You really have to prune the index down, or the index becomes so squashed and so tiny that it's not useful to read through anyway. So, it's really vital, and the editor and the publisher have to get involved in that stage as well. How many pages will be left at the end for the index, and then the indexer can fill them.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah. So, what kind of tools and technology do you use in indexing?

Madeleine Davis: For back of book indexing there are basically three kinds of software. Syndex, Macrex and Sky, and they do all the grunt work for you. So, they do the alphabetization, they make sure that all the page references are in numerical order, they help you change anything, they help you with the see references, the also references, make sure that they're pointing in the right directions and so on, spelling, all of those sorts of things.

Perfect software to do that, and then once you've done it in one of these softwares, it can be converted to Word or PDF, or whatever the printer requires.

The other software that has been developed is called Index Manager, and it's for embedded indexing. Embedded indexing has actually been around for a few years, and it's used for eBooks, and it's used for general books where the publisher wants to be able to reproduce the book in another format.

So, for an eBook or for a general book, embedded indexing means placing a tag or an anchor in a word or a paragraph within the text and then linking that to your general index term.

So, the index looks exactly the same as a normal index. When you click on it, you don't have page references, it just goes straight to where the anchor or the tag is in the text.

So, you can have an embedded index at the back of an eBook, you go to the index, click on it, it takes you into wherever you want to go in the eBook. Ditto with the see and see-also references as well.

It means that the publisher can then republish that book in a print format, or if the book has been updated, then the index will automatically go to wherever the tag is in the word or the paragraph in the new format and so on.

It sounds good, and it has been taken up and it has been requested by a number of big publishers, not the small publishers. It's an expensive technology. It takes a lot longer for the indexer to do, and yes, it's available, but it's still kind of a niche project.

One of the Society of Indexers did a recent survey asking about how many indexers do embedded indexing as opposed to normal back of book indexing and it was a small sample.

So, it's not that popular.

Anna Featherstone: Is that partly because with e books there's a search function so people can search on words and search on themes?

Madeleine Davis: Probably partly because of that, but one of the arguments against a search function, and I know everybody thinks the search is great and Google is great and so on, is the search is only as good as the term you ask to search for it.

What's a good example?

So, I did a history book on Australia and there was mention about suffragettes, about women in Australia. There was mention about suffragettes, women's liberation, the vote for women, and now probably would include the #MeToo movement.

So, a search engine can only find one of those things for you, but an indexer can go, okay, if you're interested in this, look at #MeToo, look at this, look at this, and look at this.

So, yes, search engines are reasonable, but they can't link information.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, and that's actually fascinating, isn't it?

It's always, how good is the search term query you put in? And that's the beauty of a wonderful index, it brings it all together for you.

Actually, that just made me think too, that's something that audiobooks are missing. Is there any?

Madeleine Davis: Not that I know of.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, because the beauty of one of those great books is you can always go back to the index to look up things and find quickly what you're looking for, whereas you don't have that capability.

Madeleine Davis: No.

Anna Featherstone: Oh, I hadn't even thought of that as a thing that doesn't work for audiobooks. Very interesting. I'd still love my print books, I've got to say, especially the ones with the indexes.

Okay, so I'm a bit fascinated, obviously we're indie authors, so what do you think about people doing it yourself? How do they go about it if they can't afford an indexer, or their book doesn't warrant that investment because it's just a small side project?

Madeleine Davis: I wouldn't suggest it, of course not. In the old days publishers used to pay for the indexer and now I know it's probably more that the author has to pay for the index themselves.

Anna Featherstone: So, you're saying traditionally published authors have to pay for their own index?

Madeleine Davis: In the old days they didn't. Now, I'm hearing more and more that yes, they do.

For the author to do it themselves, look, there are a number of training courses online, run by the U.S. society, the Canadian society, the British society. There's a course at Buckley University which is run by many combined indexers. They're online. Some of them are just introductions to indexing. Some are more extended, intermediate indexing and so on.

It's truly useful to do one of those just to get an idea of how to go about it.

It's seriously not just a list of words and page references, and just doing a course like that, even just an introductory course, and they're all in the notes that I sent you, would be really useful if you want to do it yourself.

Then ring up one of the societies. Ring us up and say, I've got a problem here, can I do this? And of course we'll help.

But I think the author is too close and I think you'll become bogged down by how difficult it is, particularly if there are a lot of references per page and so on because you're going backwards and forwards, and if you don't have the specialty software, it's really cumbersome.

Anna Featherstone: Yeah, I remember like when I was investigating doing my own index, I did get bogged down. I did get overwhelmed. I spent so much time looking at, well, what are my options? What software do I use? How do I go about it? And then it started to run into a few days of me trying to start, and then I came to the conclusion, do I really want to spend three weeks perfecting an index that I could be doing another project for the book, like marketing the book or starting the next book, and that's one of those times when I decided, yeah, I need a specialist. And I've had many people comment how great the index is.

I do think another reason it's great to have an index too, is librarians will often, if they have two books that are on a similar topic, they'll often pick the one with the index. It shows much more thoroughness. It's much more user-friendly.

So, in the end I did struggle with it as an indie author, trying to do everything myself, and then I was like, no, that's something like a cover design, I'm going to outsource, and I'm really glad I did.

You're a very interesting little group, you indexers. So, what are some of the paths into becoming an indexer? How does one get into indexing?

Madeleine Davis: Most indexers come through the librarian cataloguer, that kind of information gathering.

I didn't. I came through after I did a degree in drama and American studies at university. I was a public servant for 18 years in Canberra and Sydney, and then serendipity. We got offered a package. I took a package. I'd always been interested in books. I did a four-day indexing course in Sydney. Then I did a course with Maclay College, which was publishing and editing. And I went, I really like this. And I was lucky, I got a job with a small legal indexing firm and did that for four years and got a great start.

Then there's a postgraduate course at Macquarie University where you do publishing, editing and also includes indexing, and started that way.

But a lot of indexers have that kind of librarian cataloguer background. But it was fascinating.

One of the things in the old days, when I first started, there were many indexes who were working with the big publishers, who were employed by big publishers.

Now, they're almost all freelancers. So, you can contact us on the different society websites. We've all got directories. The US, the Canadians, the Germans, the Dutch, the Australian, New Zealanders, the South Africans. We've all got a directory on our website so that you can browse through the different indexers who are available for work, see what their specialities are, see the books that they've indexed and contact them directly.

Anna Featherstone: It is quite amazing that we as authors can now pick to work with people who work with some of the top authors in the world because they're freelancers.

I mean, it's not great for them because they're no longer traditionally employed either, but also, it's wonderful.

Okay, I want to know, do you have a favorite book or index that you've worked on? Or what are some highlights?

Madeleine Davis: I put together a little list. The most exciting thing about my work is the myriad journeys and interesting journeys that I've been on. Sociology, politics, biography, history to surfing.

I did a book on Michael Peterson who was an early Australian surfer, and my surfing brother helped me with that one. I learned all about the different terms, et cetera. I know everything anyone would ever want to know about death metal, which is a sub-genre of heavy metal. I've been on train journeys all over the world, courtesy of a book called Trains Unlimited in the 21st Century.

I learned heaps about the Middle East and Central Asia and its wars, and all the stans; Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in a book called Carpet Wars, and also learned a lot about Persian carpets. I've indexed a book about the Bali bombings and the aftermath.

This is interesting. I know about the wonderful gift that birds give humans in a book called Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell Us About Our Health and the World. In a book called Spectral Spaces and Hauntings, I learned about graveyards, roadside shrines, vanished towns, re-photography, zombies, re-corporealization, and psycho geography.

But the best, the most hilarious and fascinating title I've ever indexed was called, Hung Like an Argentine Duck: A Journey Back in Time to the Origins of Sexual Intimacy. It was a tour through the sex lives of ancient fish and dinosaurs, the unusual mating habits of arthropods, tortoises, and even a well-endowed Argentine duck.

Anna Featherstone: Oh my God, who knew indexers had all this fun?

Madeleine Davis: It's hilarious and, and lots of other interesting books as well.

I mean, being a freelancer, yes, you can pick and choose, but normally you'd take whatever, but it's a fascinating area to work.

Anna Featherstone: What a great way to earn a living from reading books as well. Like, how magnificent, I love it. And you'd be fabulous to sit with at a quiz at a pub, because you'd have all the answers.

Madeleine Davis: But you read so quickly sometimes. You're doing it, you're doing it, you're doing it and you're concentrating and then the book's over and you start the next one. I have actually kept some of the books that I've indexed because they're so fascinating.

Anna Featherstone: I love that. Okay.

So, we go from how great that is to, I'm wondering what impact is AI having on indexing?

Madeleine Davis: Interesting. Yes, there've been a few presentations at some of our recent conferences overseas with the various societies, and it is fascinating for us. At the moment, from my experience and some of my colleagues, AI can do a fabulous list with page references of nouns, mostly. What it can't really do is concepts, analysis of the text.

I've never seen, and I've done an experiment, I've never seen AI be able to do a cross reference or subheadings. So, an AI index that I've seen can give you 20 references to this term in a chapter or a book, but it can't divide them into logical subheadings, so you can see what those 20 references are about.

For you to look up 20-25 references to a subject, it's not really worth doing. That's not really what the index is there for.

However, that being said, it's learning all the time. It can certainly, probably in the future, do books that are medical, medical terms or legal terms, things that don't require that much analysis, but you know, require a list of major headings and where they are in the book.

At the moment, we're not really there and we haven't seen anything.

Certainly, it can maybe do some of the arduous things, like you said, okay, if the author wants a list of all the names in the book. It certainly can do something like that, but you would then have to go in and edit and make sure that there's nothing else to say about that particular name.

But yes, it's on the horizon, and yes, at the moment it's probably too expensive for publishers to incorporate, although I think they are incorporating in some of the editing processes. But we're waiting and we'll wait and see. But at the moment, you still need a human being.

Anna Featherstone: Love that. Love a good human being.

So, how many qualified indexers do you think there are in Australia and around the world?

Madeleine Davis: So, I looked this up for you. We have international meetings of all the societies about three times a year. So, Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexes have 71 members. The South Africans have 16. The American Society of Indexing has 450. China, 200. The German Indexing Society has 50 members. The Canadian Society has 123. The Netherlands has 9. And the Society of Indexers in the UK has 200. So, it varies a lot. The three biggest are the Americans, the UK and the Canadians.

In Australia, we had many more a few years ago. We have dwindling numbers, probably because there's no longer specific indexing being taught in any of the faiths or colleges or in universities here. So, it's something we're looking at. Most of our indexes are retiring. But we do. We do have a few newbies.

But it's a tricky occupation to get into. Freelance, you've got to seek your own work. You've got to establish your experience and reputation and so on. The best thing is that once you've worked with an editor or an author, they can recommend you on for another project and so on.

Anna Featherstone: I think this podcast will probably encourage some other people to take it up as well, not just for their own books, but if you actually do master it for your own books, it is a service you could offer to others as well.

Madeleine Davis: That would be great.

Anna Featherstone: I think it's interesting too how you mentioned that the bulk is non-fiction books that have indexes, but there are some of those bigger fantasy series that do have indexes to characters, places. What else do they have in them?

Madeleine Davis: Mostly characters and events. But it doesn't probably require the analysis that a biography would, or a history book would. So, they're reasonably light-hearted and so on. But yeah, that can happen.

Anna Featherstone: Okay, anything else of interest you want to tell us about book indexers?

Madeleine Davis: We work alone. So, it's always really lovely to have, finally, after the COVID years, face to face conferences. We do a lot of networking by zoom, something like this. We do a lot of seminars by zoom, meetings by zoom and so on, but it's really wonderful to have conferences because we basically work alone, and we work all over Australia. So, it's sometimes difficult to get together. Zoom has been wonderful. I mean, during COVID, we all learned how to use this new technology, and it was just wonderful. It's also great to talk to authors who might live in another part of Australia and so on, but basically, we work alone.

I'm told you should always leave your audience laughing. So, I have a couple of indexing light bulb jokes.

This came from a conference that I went to in Albuquerque, New Mexico, many, many years ago.

How many indexers does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to vet the wattage, one to mark the place, one to convert to HTML, and one to light up the user.

Anna Featherstone: Oh, I love that.

Madeleine Davis: Second. This is really an in-joke. How many indexers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. We're kept in the dark until the last possible moment and then expected to work miracles.

Anna Featherstone: Okay. That's true, and just thinking about this, indexers are really the unsung heroes of the book world. You're invisible really, but so well used and so needed, that back of the book is vital for so many and just adds so much depth to a book.

So, I'd like to give you a little bit of applause across the internet for all the work that you all do and how you help us authors serve our readers better.

So, thank you so much Madeleine. I know many readers eyes light up when they realize a book has a great index. So, you going behind the scenes with us just adds so much depth, and we're going to have links to all the different associations in the show notes. So, people will be able to track you down and thank you personally for this deep dive.

Anything you want to say to listeners?

Madeleine Davis: No, thank you. Just emphasize again how useful an index is, how it can lead your book to be referred to many eons later, how it can be browsed, and how it can open up everything that you want covered in the content and show people where the emphasis is, where you have the most discussion, where you have the most people.

It's a snapshot of what you have in your book.

Anna Featherstone: Brilliant. So, thank you again.

And to you, the listener, thanks for sharing your time with us today. I'm Anna Featherston and along with the ALLi team, we wish you lots of happy writing and publishing until next time.

I hope you all go out and check the backs of your books for indexes and think about potentially adding them to your own.

Thanks again.

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