An alliance of highly skilled, professional indexers with experience in creating quality indexes in the areas of history and archaeology.

What Does a Professional Indexer Offer?
The American Society for Indexing History/Archaeology Special Interest Group has the skills, subject matter knowledge, and experience to provide indexes that offer your readers ease of access to your book’s content. A well-written index significantly increases the value of your work. In today’s information climate, a book is most accessible through its index. Thus, quality indexes matter a great deal to authors — and to us.

How to Work with an Indexer
Many scholarly presses expect the author either to create the index or to hire someone else to create it. Authors should be sure to understand the expectations of the press and editor in this regard as soon as the manuscript is accepted and the copyediting process has begun. If authors wait until page proofs arrive to contact an indexer, they may find that the best person for their project already has a full schedule and cannot index their book. So it’s important for authors and editors to begin to make inquiries about hiring an indexer as soon as a reasonably firm schedule is in place.

Most indexers are willing to chat with authors and editors about the indexing process either via e-mail or on the telephone. It’s important to work out the details of the editor-indexer or author-indexer relationship before the indexing commences. Some possible questions to discuss include the following: Does the author or editor expect certain terms to appear in the index? What is the press style for the index (e.g., run-in vs. indented, page range style, treatment of figures, special coding)? What is the schedule (for the press, author, and indexer)? Are there length limitations? Will the author review the index before it goes to the press? What is the indexer’s fee and how will it be paid (by press, perhaps out of royalties, or by the author)? What is the preferred delivery format of the index?

Our Experience
Our clients include academic authors, university and scholarly presses, small presses, trade publishers, textbook publishers, professional journals, historical and archaeological societies and associations, state and local history publishers, archaeological and historical projects, presses and organizations producing texts of historical or archaeological interest.

Disclaimer
Note: The listings on this Web site were prepared by ASI History/Archaeology SIG members to aid publishers, authors, and other potential service users in the search for qualified, dependable indexers and to enable communication among members. This group makes no representation, guarantee, or warranty as to the quality of any member’s work. Business and contractual agreements are solely between the indexer and the client.