The Cost is Negotiable.

Our fees are usually set through negotiations with our clients.

We realize budgets have to be met and are almost always tight. So rather than set a hard and fast price schedule, we like to talk with you to determine expectations, job requirements, the index size, and deadlines.

Indexes are not created overnight. We read every page of the text and evaluate them for indexable items. It requires concentration, attention to detail, and reflection. We like to stop frequently, review a bit of the job just completed, try putting ourselves in the place of the writer and the reader, and decide whether both are served by our indexing decisions. It's a complex activity and requires more time than many authors and editors imagine. It's almost comparable to creating the text itself.

Normally our indexing time is allocated as follows: 1) preliminary rapid reading of the text (7% of indexing time), 2) reading the text and marking passages for index entries (55%), 3) inputting entries into indexing software (18%), 4) editing the index (16%), 5) generating and printing the index (4%). To create an index for a 220-page book takes about 45 hours.

It's easiest to calculate the cost for creating an index by the number of pages in the book. We're rewarded for speed and efficiency. And we'll know the total bill in advance. Special considerations like rush work, an unusually long or short project, a multi-authored book, numerous consultations with author or editor may push the rate a bit higher.

Per-page rates range from $2.00 per page for universities and small presses to as high as $10 per page for hi-tech work. The typical range is between $2.00 and $5.00 per page depending on degree of technical difficulty, denseness of text, and the depth of indexing. Using these rates, the index for a 220-page book would cost somewhere between $400 and $800 to create.

Please keep in mind that the cost of every index we create is a product of our negotiations before the start of any project.

How big will it be?

Though the size of an index is not an indicator of quality, a short index in a long document should be suspect. The minimum size for an index can be calculated in a couple of ways.

As a rough rule of thumb, figure one index entry for every 100 words of text. Or, for every 20 pages of text (not including flow charts, lists, figures, tables, blank pages, front matter) there should be one double-column index page.

The typical index contains about 4 lines per page of text indexed. Index size can range from 2-5% of the total indexable pages in a general trade book (for light text not heavy on details) to 7-8% for college textbooks to 10-15%+ for technical documentation.

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