Just so you know …

… Why you need and how to work with a book indexer: a guide for authors. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I have been an editorial freelancer for nearly 20 years and seen many changes in the publishing industry. A major one is the amount of indexing I now do directly for authors. Fewer publishers now commission indexers, so their authors are told to do their own index or to find an indexer. The author is therefore now more often responsible for paying for the index. Some authors can get grants from an awarding body to pay for their index, e.g. universities for academic authors. I have heard of authors who refuse to pay for the index, putting the responsibility back onto the publisher, but this could risk the book having no index at all. Nobody wants that outcome, so the decision is then whether to index the book yourself or find an indexer