STYLE
1) Do you have your own house style guide for indexes?
2) If you don’t have a house style, what is your preferred style?(e.g., University of Chicago Press: the Chicago Manual of Style; if you have a preferred style other than the Chicago Manual of Style, please furnish a sample of what you want the finished index to look like.)

INDEXABLE MATERIAL
1) Do you require prefaces, notes, tables, and appendices indexed, or only the main text?
2)Do you require more than one index?(e.g., one each for subjects, places, and names)

HEADING STYLES
1) Would you like headings in boldface?
2) Do you want subheadings capitalized?
3) Do you prefer indented or run-on subheads?(In an indented index, each subheading has its own line and is indented. In run-on indexes, subheadings immediately follow each other separated by a semicolon and a space. The indented format makes browsing through the index much easier. However, for extremely long indexes, the run-on format can save space.)
4) Do you have a limit to the depth of the levels of headings? (Some publishers limit the index to two or three levels of headings. In run-on indexes it’s best to have only two levels of headings.)
5) Do you prefer cross-references to be run-on or indented, and appear at the beginning or end of entries?
6) Do you prefer proper nouns and names only to be capitalized, or also initial words of main headings, or initial words of all headings?

ALPHABETIZATION
Word-by-word or letter-by-letter? (In letter-by-letter alphabetization, spaces and other characters are ignored during alphabetizing and words are sorted as if they are run together. Using the word-by-word style, spaces are evaluated and letters sorted up to the end of the first word.)

AUDIENCE
Who is the audience for this publication?(e.g., scholarly, technical, trade, expert, average, basic: it takes more time to produce highly structured, detailed indexes for experts than it does to create indexes for basic users.)

FORMAT
1) Will you send us a draft version, or final page galleys?
2) When will we receive the draft or galleys?
3) When shall we return the index to you and in what format?(type of word processor application; disk and/or hard copy. If you just want the file in ASCII format, that is possible. However, you will lose formatting codes placed in the index: i.e. you will have to italicize all the cross-references, re-capitalize entries, and perform other formatting tasks throughout the index.)
4) What is to be the length of the index: unlimited? or limited by number of pages, length of lines, columns per page, number of entries, other?
5) How big is the book?(number of pages, page size, font size, heavy use of photographs, or anything else that might effect the number of words on the page.)
6) Do you have any limitations on the index size? (Common limitations include the number of pages reserved for the index, number of lines per page, total number of entries, or number of characters per line.)