Cost factors for indexes

This is a partial list of considerations that go into setting costs for an index:

Basic rate factors

• Number of pages of your book
• “Readability” level
• Simplicity of style and organization of material
• Subject(s) of your book

Things which may add to your costs

• Extremely specialized subject matter
• Academic or technical jargon
• Foreign-language names and phrases
• Genre publication indexes, e.g., cookbooks, art books, biographies and autobiographies, product sales catalogs, annual reviews, periodicals, etc.
• Tables and figures with indexable content
• Research that requires use of outside reference sources
• Time allowed for indexing to be done (rush jobs cost more)
• Number of pages allotted for the index (too few and it becomes a challenge)
• Problematic formats (e.g., books with no section headings within chapters)
• “Word lists” (professional indexers do not need these)
• Extra vocabulary control for books with multiple audiences  who will use different terms to search for identical material
• Extra vocabulary control for multi-authored books containing articles using different terms for similar topics
• Extra vocabulary control and formatting for multi-volume works and cumulative indexes.
• Large numbers of See and See also cross-references
• Index design, electronic markup, or other special formatting