Indexing a Book

And why it's an essential pain.

Indexing is a pain in the ass.

We authors love to write books, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. Writing books is hard – it’s an often isolating slog putting thoughts to keyboard, crafting insightful prose that you hope entertains and informs, and if you’re really lucky, you might shift enough books to treat yourself to a slap-up meal down the line. But we love it. Four years of work is rewarded the day you open the box from the publishers and hold your finished book for the first time.

But indexing. Indexing is a pain in the ass.

As I begin the indexing of my forthcoming book Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor, the very last stage where the author is involved before it heads to the printers, allow me pull the veil back a little and bring into the process. Anything to avoid doing the actual indexing, after all.

Why the need for an index, first of all? Well, an index in any non-fiction book is crucial and absolutely integral to the book’s enduring worth as a tool of research. Historical books, for example, aside from telling an interesting story, usually are retained by the reader for reference in future.

Remember that really interesting titbit you once read about when that guy fought that battle called whatchamacallit in whatnot? How are you going to quickly find the details again in a book of 500 pages? Well, within seconds you head to the index (often situated at the back-of-the-book and a complement to the table of contents at the front), find the keyword you’re looking for, and head straight to the page. It’s a handy roadmap, essentially, featuring names, places, and events with their associated page number.

Now some non-fictions books don’t include an index, and that’s the prerogative of the author or the publisher. Some new authors aren’t aware of the importance of an index, or perhaps even know how to compile one, and some publishers are happy to proceed without one to save money – less pages, less production costs.

If you’re writing history, I would ALWAYS insist on including an index. Your readers will thank you, you will thank yourself later on when you’re trying to find someone or something you wrote about for a talk or a podcast or a blog, and, quite frankly, the lack of an index hurts the credibility of the book. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but it will be a criticism included in reviews. So, index.

If you’re publisher says its not required, insist. Take a look at any non-fiction book on your bookshelf, particularly those from the big name historians you hope of one day emulating - what they are doing in their books, you want to do in your book. They wouldn’t dream of publishing a book that doesn’t include an index, therefore neither should you. As Prop Joe from The Wire said, ‘look the part, be the part’. Do what the top sellers are doing.

How does one index? Well, when I wrote my first book that required an index, The House of Beaufort, I had two pointers so that I could learn on the job. The publisher’s style guide, and a full bookshelf to refer to. Follow the style guide to know how to structure the index, and look at dozens of books from other historians to understand what, who, and where, they are including.

I have only written for one publisher, but I will assume that the vast majority of publishing houses have a style guide that is very similar. I struggle to see where they would differ greatly. My publisher stipulates that no formatting should be used as there are typesetting employees that will take care of that down the line. It should, of course, be arranged alphabetically (with words taking precedence over letters) and each letter section separated only by a space.

All words included should be lower case except for nouns, so ;Henry VII’ and ‘heraldry’, for example. If you’re including rivers, for example enter as ‘Thames, river’ or mountains as ‘Snowdon, mount’, otherwise you could end up with a whole list beginning with River. That’s just useless. But basically, read the bloody style guide and follow exactly as you’re directed. Don’t use initiative, don’t think you know better, just do as the publisher dictates. Choose the path of least resistance.

How I index, and I’m sure other writers will have their own way, which may even make more sense (comment below if you have thoughts), is I begin at page one of my proofs and scan through the work until I find a word that should be included. Of course, with each person, place, and event, the author needs to make a judgement call on whether to include this in the index, and evaluate if there will be any likelihood of this entry ever being searched out.

My personal rule is to include everyone and everywhere mentioned, even if its just the solitary mentioned. I’ve actually visited places to give a talk where I’ve often gone to my index to see if the place was mentioned – you’d be amazed at some of places in your book that you forgot were included as soon as you’ve typed the world, but which now a few years later reveals an interesting fact you can raise at an opportune moment. My rule is if it’s in the text, its in the index.

Let’s take this extract on page 11 below:

Now, the first word that I come across that needs to be indexed is in the very first line, ‘Henry the 7th’. According to my publisher’s style guide, saints, queens, kings and popes should be indexed under their forenames. So, my first entry is going to be:

Henry VII, King of England

Now, I have a choice here – I can either include the page number where he is mentioned next to his name (separated by three spaces as per the style guide) so that it appears:

Henry VII, King of England   11,  

Or, if I know he is a principal figure of the book and that I should break down and categorise mentions of him for further ease of navigation. This is called a subentry, and would appear as follows:

Henry VII King of England

Welsh Lineage   11,

As I continue through the text, more and more words will jump out on every page – I capture them, get them in the index and list the page number. On the page given above, I spot Pembroke which should be included and which will appear copiously throughout the text, for example.

And so it continues. Methodical, functional, very boring, but essential. Again, so boring here I am, talking to you ABOUT indexing rather than DOING indexing. But gradually, you will start to compile your index, with hundreds of entries.

Eventually, the entry for Henry VII may appear as below (taken from Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders):

Elsewhere, for entries where I decided that subentries are not essential (for example, in Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders, the only people I did subentries for are Henry VII, Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel and Edward of Warwick, i.e., the principal characters) it may appear as follows:

As you may notice, for non-monarchs, the family surname is used, but often the noble title is included to identify the person mentioned. Alphabetical order is maintained in this instance, for a Edward Howard comes before a John Howard, regardless of when they lived.

Anyway, there we have it, how an index is compiled. Here is how it looked in the finalised, published version. If I ever have any need to look up Glastonbury (and not just for the music), I know that on page 259 and 263 of Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders, I mentioned it. Can I tell you off the top of my head what the hell I wrote about that merited the mention of Glastonbury? Nope. That’s what the index is for.

If you’re a reader, hope you enjoy a brief insight into how a book is produced - it isn’t just writing about battles and kings. If you’re an author new to the game and debating whether to do an index, you simply have to. If you have already written a book and didn’t do an index, don’t worry, just do it for your next book, which I trust you are working on right now.

Which reminds me, I really need to get back to creating mine. Sigh.

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Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor is on sale from July 2024, available from all good bookshops (online and in store). Pre-Order NOW.