If a client contacts you about a project and your schedule is already full, then take the initiative to tell the client what does work for you. Something like, “I’m afraid I’m not available at that time, but I can write the index if the due date can be extended by two weeks.”

I am often pleasantly surprised when the schedule proves more flexible than it initially appears. I would not have known unless I asked.

This tactic does not always work, of course. Sometimes schedules are firm and the client decides to find another indexer. But if I am interested in the project, it is always worth asking.

(Of course, some projects I am not interested in and am happy to let pass.)

It is important to remember that we, as freelancers, have agency. Simply responding to clients with a yes or no, without any further information, is letting the client control negotiations. So if a schedule or other detail does not work, make a counter-offer. Tell the client what does work. Give the client an opportunity to meet you partway. Now you are taking the initiative. The client has agency too and may reject your proposal, but at least you have spoken up for yourself and explored all options.

Similarly, if you see an upcoming gap in your schedule, contact past clients to see if they have any upcoming work. Let them know your availability. Assuming you’ve previously had a positive experience with the client and want to work with them again, contacting past clients can be one of the easiest ways to market yourself, because you already have an established rapport and track record. A short message puts you front of mind and may prompt them to take action if hiring an indexer has been on their to-do list.

Taking this a step further, schedule a regular, quarterly check-in with past clients. Say hi, let them know your upcoming availability and that you’d love to work with them on another project. Maybe include an article or other tidbit they may find interesting. Be a good and proactive partner, so that they don’t forget about you.

Being a freelancer can involve a lot of waiting for that next project and hoping that schedules align. But this waiting does not need to be passive. Remember that you have agency too. Make counter-offers. Proactively share when you are available. You may be surprised at what becomes possible. 

I received a thoughtful reply (thank you!), which prompted me to think further about the differences between authors and publishers as clients, and of how the two overlap.

The specific client mix is going to be different for each indexer. Some indexers work almost exclusively with authors. Other indexers, like myself, tend to work more with publishers.

There is no right or wrong client mix. You should aim for whoever is comfortable to work with and whoever is best able to meet your business goals. Your client mix may also reflect your personal background and connections. That said, there are also pros and cons to different types of clients. It can be helpful to keep these differences in mind when building and fine-tuning your client mix. 

Authors as Clients

Authors are fairly self-evident. They are either the person who (co-)wrote the book or the volume editor. Authors may be self-published, or the press has passed on the responsibility for the index to the author. Authors may pay out-of-pocket or, especially if they are academics, be using university funds. When the author is the client, you communicate and negotiate directly with the author, not the press.

The benefits of working directly with authors are that they:

• May have a larger budget, especially if they are drawing on university funds.
• Can be an effective source of referrals.
• Tend to be one-off contracts, so if the experience goes poorly, you less likely need to consider working with them again. 

The downsides to working with authors are that they:

• May have a smaller budget, especially if paying out-of-pocket.
• May require more educating about the indexing and publishing process.
• May not communicate effectively about schedules and other important details, either because they don’t understand the production process or because they are busy and forget.
• Being individuals, each author likely represents a single book. Authors can become repeat clients if they write and publish multiple books, but at best that is likely a new book every year or two. Maintaining a full schedule of authors means building and maintaining a large pipeline. 

Publishers as Clients

Publishers, in contrast, come with a different set of benefits and challenges. By publishers, I mean traditional presses, hybrid publishers, and book packagers. Basically, any larger company producing multiple books. Publishers may hire directly or be a source of referrals to authors.

The advantages to working with publishers includes:

• Repeat and regular work, if the publisher is able to send multiple books per year.
• Assuming multiple books per publisher, fewer publishers are needed to fill a schedule.
• Better understanding and communication about the production process and indexing specs.

The main disadvantages to working with publishers are:

• Smaller and fixed budgets (often, but not always).
• Risk of losing a larger chunk of work if the publisher leaves.

So far, it seems pretty straightforward. Authors can require more work to find and work with, but with greater potential financial reward. Publishers can be easier to work with and provide a greater sense of security by filling up a larger portion of the schedule, but they may not pay as well and losing a publisher as a client can be more devastating. 

There are two further nuances worth paying attention to.

Where Are Those Authors Coming From?

It can be an illuminating exercise to ask how authors find you. Are they coming via your website? A Find an Indexer listing? Referral from a friend or colleague? Or are they being referred by their publisher?

Most academic presses do not hire directly. Instead, they make the index the author’s responsibility and may give the author a list of recommended indexers. It can appear that you are being contacted by a lot of different authors (and you are), but look closer and you realize they are all being recommended by the same handful of presses. This has been my experience, for the most part.

At this point, who is actually the client? The authors are clearly clients, since they are the ones negotiating and paying. But I would suggest that the publisher is also a client. Getting those referrals requires somehow getting onto that list of recommended indexers, which likely requires marketing directly to the publisher. Being on that list, while a valuable source of referrals, also exposes you to the risk of losing all of those referrals should the press stop recommending you. 

So if you want to work primarily with authors, keep a couple of points in mind:

• The best way to reach authors may actually be to market to publishers, to get onto their recommendations list.
• Try to be referred by multiple publishers. This spreads out the risk of losing work should one source of referrals end. 

When Editors Move

If the publisher is the client, you are likely in contact with a specific editor. If it is a larger press, you may be in touch with more than one editor. The challenge is that editors can move.

An editor moving isn’t necessarily terrible news for you. The editor may take you with them to their new position and continue to hire. The editor may also pass your name to their successor, and you continue to work for that publisher. But just as often, I find, the editor doesn’t need indexers in their new position, or they don’t pass your name on, or their successor already has their own list of freelancers. It may be several months before you clue into the fact that a contact has moved, and trying to get re-established with a publisher can be like marketing to a new client. 

All that to say, while publishers can be a great source of reliable work, the real client is perhaps the editor. And editors can be much more transient. Positive relationships can end unexpectedly through no fault of your own.

To manage the risk, try to connect to multiple editors at a press (if the press is large enough to have multiple editors) or ask your contact for referrals to their colleagues. Also, work with multiple publishers. While some relationships will hopefully be long-lasting, assuming that others will end. Spread out the risk by working with a variety of publishers. 

I don’t want this post to be discouraging with all this talk about risk and the downsides to different types of clients. It is possible to thrive as a freelance indexer working primarily with authors, or primarily with publishers, or a mix of both. 

To thrive, though, I think it helps to understand who you are working with, so that you can adjust your marketing, scheduling, communication, and expectations. If you want to change or grow your business, then that may mean changing who your clients are, and how you approach marketing, communication, scheduling, etc…

Know who your clients are. Identify any weaknesses or risks. Adjust to strengthen your client base and put your business on a more sustainable footing to better withstand inevitable changes. 

I don’t want to change the publishers and authors that I work with. There are a handful of publishers I’ve worked with for almost as long as I’ve been freelancing. I am grateful for these long-standing relationships and would hate to lose them. Yet as my business changes, I wonder if some of my clients and I will part ways.

My main concern, right now, is with price. I have been raising my prices to help raise my income to a level which is in line with my current financial needs and goals. I had a good discussion earlier this year with one of my anchor clients in which my contact acknowledged that they want to continue to work with me and that they want to pay me fairly, and yet there is a limit to how much of a price increase they can accommodate. We did settle on an increase, for which I am thankful. I would be very sad to lose this client. Yet a part of me is still uneasy, wondering about the next time we have this conversation.

For me, a key part of running a sustainable indexing business is having a diverse mix of clients and projects. Even my biggest clients provide no more than fifteen or twenty percent of my total income. I currently work with about fifteen different publishers, both trade and scholarly, who either hire me directly or refer me to their authors. Some of these publishers only hire or refer me for one or two books per year, but cumulatively it all add up. 

I don’t want to be too dependent on any one source because clients come and go. Over the fifteen years I’ve been freelancing, it has happened at least five or six times that a publisher I’ve worked with has gone out of business, was downsized, my main contact left, or… I don’t fully know the reason why I stopped hearing from them. But because I have a diverse mix of clients, occasionally losing one, while sad, doesn’t make much of a difference to my schedule. There are enough other offers coming in to fill the gap.

Maintaining a good mix also means that I am not tied to any single production schedule. Publishers tend to follow an internal production cycle, which depends on the types of books they publish and the audience they sell to. Think trade publishers releasing books in time for Christmas or textbook publishers preparing for the start of the next academic year. By working with a variety of publishers, there are certain times of the year I may index more trade, other times of the year more scholarly. Either way, my schedule stays full. 

A mix of projects also provides variety and respite. Some books are more of a grind to read and index. Having a different subject to switch to, or a different audience, can feel like a break even if it is still indexing.

So if you are a newer indexer, I recommend diversifying your client base and project mix. Specializing can be a excellent tactic to be distinctive and to simplify marketing, as well as to play to your strengths and subject expertise, but try to have three or four specialities, not just one. An anchor client or two who send multiple projects per year is great, but don’t stop there. Try to have at least six publishers, if not a dozen, who regularly offer work. If you primarily work with authors, be intentional about asking for referrals and expanding your network. The best way to ensure steady work is to have work from multiple sources. 

Over time, a wide client base should self-perpetuate. Satisfied clients become regular, repeat clients. Satisfied clients also pass your name along, leading to new clients. The need to actively market lessens because enough offers keep coming in. This has been my experience over the last several years. It is an excellent and fortunate position to be in. 

And yet.

As my business goals change, as I seek to optimize income, as I seek projects and clients which are a better fit for me, I may also need to proactively shift who I work with.

This is the part which is a pep talk for myself, because change is hard. I want my clients to like me. I don’t want to say no to reliable sources of work. Yet while serving the client is important, I need to remember that my business also exists to serve me. I am choosing to freelance in order to earn a certain level of income and to have a measure of control and flexibility in how I work. My client and project mix should support these goals as well.

I am not planning on making drastic changes, but I think I do need to be prepared for some change. I need to be prepared that I may price out clients as I raise rates. Being proactive, I can identify and fire my lowest paying clients, to make room for those with larger budgets. I can also look to see which books and subjects are most lucrative for me to index and which I earn the least on. Either I need to raise prices for those low performers or I need to turn down those offers and focus marketing on what I am good at. I want to maintain a diverse mix of clients, while also acknowledging that there are likely potential clients out there who are a better fit for my current goals whom I am not yet working with. The trick is to somehow find them. 

For experienced indexers, I think it is important to periodically check in with our business goals and to see if our current work aligns. Change can feel risky, especially if everything seems to be going alright. But improvements can often be made. Change can be incremental, more like adjusting the course. Change does not need to be wholesale reinvention. 

Whether you are a new indexer or experienced, how do you find your current mix of clients and projects? Are there any relationships you want to keep and strengthen? Any clients you want to get rid of? A dream client you have yet to land?

Is Indexing by AI Nearly Here?

One colleague flagged this article from The Scholarly Kitchen, “AI-Enabled Transformation of Information Objects Into Learning Objects,” by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe. Hinchliffe reviews three new AI tools which purport to help readers access and understand academic writings. Of particular interest to indexers is what Hinchliffe writes about Papers AI Assistant: 

When exploring the functionality as a beta tester, I was curious how the results compared to my pre-AI tool practice of making heavy use of CTRL-F to locate keywords in lengthy texts. I found that, not only did the Papers AI save me a great deal of time by providing me with an overview annotated with links to specific sections of the text, it also often alerted me to places in the text where my topic of interest was conceptually discussed without the use of the specific keywords I would have searched.

Did you catch that last bit? Papers AI Assistant can apparently identify discussions of interest without the use of a keyword search. That is what a good index is supposed to do. Is this the beginnings of an AI that can replace indexers? Hinchliffe also writes that, “I am excited by the possibilities these AI tools offer for moving the focus from access to information to comprehension of it.”

A few thoughts: I have to admit that I am skeptical of the claim or hope that Papers AI and similar tools will help readers comprehend information. My sense is that AI works best as a tool, with the user clearly understanding its strengths and limitations, and with the user making the final decision on the quality of results and how best to use the results. That is similar to how I use the search function when indexing. Search is useful for double-checking facts and mentions, but I know that it doesn’t catch everything and isn’t good at providing context; I still need to read and understand the book. My fear is that many users will uncritically accept whatever the AI tool tells them, turning a program like Papers AI into glorified CliffNotes and enabling an even shallower engagement with the text. 

I think it is also worth pointing out that what is described here is not an index. An index is a static document that is browsable. That is very different from an AI highlighting a handful of potentially relevant passages. Browsability is key to an index because it allows the user to serendipitously find information they didn’t know they wanted to find. Being handed a few options leaves the rest of the text opaque and unaccessible. I imagine a user can keep asking the AI new questions, but that puts the onus on the user to know what they are searching for and how to ask relevant questions. 

Of course, if an AI can identify concepts and discussions in the absence of clear keywords, then a logical next step could be to ask that AI to generate an index. I can see value in the ability to create an index on the fly, for any document. I don’t know how much I would trust such an index, though. Hallucinations is one issue. Another is that AI, essentially, is built upon algorithms. Answers are always going to be follow a certain pattern. While indexing is built upon rules and conventions, the indexer also plays a key decision-making role as they shape the contents, phrasing, and structure. These judgement calls extend beyond the formal rules of indexing to take into account elements such as the audience and usability. I am skeptical that an AI would be able to understand and produce these nuances.

Another issue is that these AI tools are entirely digital. They will not work on a print book, though, of course, an AI-generated index could be published in print. Is the future of publishing and of engagement with texts entirely digital? Perhaps in academia and other specialized fields, in which there is so much information to access and consume. Print sales remain strong, however, and I am hopeful that there will continue to be a place for print indexes. Perhaps the future—finally arrived?—is what embedded indexing has long promised, which is one index capable of being used in multiple formats. 

Besides AI replacing indexers, I think it is also worth considering how we as indexers can use AI in our own work. I am aware of one colleague who uses ChatGPT to summarize complicated books and to answer queries about the text, which helps that indexer comprehend the book more quickly. Which sounds very similar to what Papers AI claims to do. I think that is a legitimate use of AI. So long as the indexer is in control—using the AI as a tool, understanding both indexing best practices and the contents of the book, and is actively shaping the index—then why not use AI? I’m also open to having AI index elements which are time-consuming to pick up, such as scientific names, so long as the indexer is providing quality control. What I don’t want to see are indexers—or anyone else—passively accepting an AI-generated index, assuming that it is accurate and functional when it is actually not. That is my worse nightmare about AI, that we abdicate our critical thinking and decision making skills, potentially leading to errors and disasters because we have lost the ability to assess what AI is telling us.

Author Pushback

In contrast to the gold rush to embed AI into publishing, another colleague pointed out that some books are beginning to be published with prohibitions against AI and machine learning listed on the copyright page.  I also recently noticed this in a book I am indexing.

I’ve also heard from a trade client that their authors are starting to insist that book contracts include a clause that their books will not be uploaded or otherwise used to train AI. By extension, this means that all freelancers hired by this press, including myself, are not allowed to use AI tools while working on their manuscripts and proofs (which isn’t a problem for me, since I wasn’t doing so anyway). 

Will authors and publishers win against AI? Will publishers find ways to enforce their contracts and prohibitions? Will publishers change their minds, or will AI developers sufficiently address the fears that authors have? I suspect this may be an area where the publishing industry goes in two different directions: some segments, such as academic publishing, which prize easy access to information (provided you can get behind the paywall), will embrace AI, while other segments, which care more about the author and which sell directly to readers, will reject AI. 

Or, maybe AI in publishing is a bubble and these new applications will fail to live up to their hype. 

I still think that someone will try to develop an AI capable to writing an index. Some publishers will probably adopt it for the sake of saving time and money, even if the resulting indexes are useless. I am also hopeful that the value of the human touch will remain. Even if AI is incorporated into our work, I think there is still place for human guidance and discernment. Machines may be capable of generating an approximation, but only humans can create what is truly useful for other humans.

Publishing houses range from small regional or literary presses that only publish ten or twenty books per year to the giant behemoths, such as HarperCollins or Penguin Random House, with their dozens of imprints. Or, from a small university press that specializes in a handful of subjects and, again, maybe only publishes ten books per year, to the massive scholarly presses like Oxford UP or Palgrave MacMillan. There is also now the distinction between traditional publishers, who buy book rights, and hybrid publishers, who give authors both more responsibility and more control. Self-publishing is also an increasingly viable option.

Some publishers manage production in-house and want to be in direct communication with their freelancers while other publishers prefer to make indexing the author’s responsibility and/or work through third-party production companies. Some publishers prefer embedded indexes while others want a separate back-of-the-book index. Some publishers care about the quality of their books and are willing to pay their freelancers a fair price while other publishers only seem to care about volume and spending as little as they can. 

Then, of course, there are the countless subjects that books are published in. Some publishers are very specialized, while others—especially large publishers—publish across a wide range of subjects.

What this means for you, as a freelance indexer (or editor, or designer, or project manager), is that the type of work you get, the type of clients you work with, and possibly even your income, can vary considerably depending on how you position yourself within these submarkets. 

Do you want to exclusively write embedded indexes? You can do that, and probably receive more offers for work than you can accept. Do you want to specialize in science and engineering texts? You can do that too. Work only with authors? Or only with publishers? You can market yourself to get those results. 

Being a freelancer within an industry as vast as publishing is both an advantage and a challenge.

The advantage is that you can’t possibly work for everyone. This gives you the freedom to pick and choose. Be competitive by choosing a segment or two that is interesting to you and that other indexers are maybe less active in. Only market towards the clients you want to work with and ignore the rest. Find a way to differentiate yourself.

The challenge is that it can be difficult to break into a niche. It takes time to build a reputation and for your name to be passed around word-of-mouth. It can be difficult to identity and contact the gatekeepers who hire or refer freelancers. I am currently trying to shift towards indexing more Asian studies and religious studies books, and even I am finding that to be a slow process. It can also be a challenge to know which niches to pursue.

But even if you experiment with a few niches to see which sticks (which is certainly fair to do as you get started), I still encourage you to try and narrow your focus. It is easier to build expertise in a subset of subjects or with a subset of clients than to be an expert at everything. And while it takes time to break in, once established I think you will find that you have more than enough work.

As you think about which niches to pursue and how to differentiate yourself, consider some of these questions:

• What subjects do you enjoy? What subjects do you already have some expertise in?
• Do you have a preference for trade books or scholarly books? What about other areas, such as journals, databases, and websites?
• Do you enjoy embedded indexing? Are you willing to learn?
• Do you prefer working with authors or publishers?
• How much do you want to earn? Which clients are more likely to pay what you want?
• How many projects do you want per month or per year?

Many indexers, including myself, work within a few niches. Having variety is both an insurance policy against one niche or client disappearing, and switching back and forth between different subjects or types of projects can also be more enjoyable. But I think most long-time indexers would also agree that they don’t try to serve everyone. That is simply too much to ask for one person.

Have a focus, or two or three. Become a recognized expert in those areas. That will serve you better in the long run. To be different is to be competitive.