Assignments

• Book editors work directly with the author on the content and style of a book, while designers prepare covers, tables and inside illustrations. Indexing is a separate task, to be completed once the book is ready for the presses, but very few book publishers have the budgets to hire full-time, in-house indexers. No computer software exists that can properly index a book, so publishers turn to freelance indexers.
  
  

Contracts

• Publishers usually pay indexers a flat, per-page fee based on the difficulty of the project. Less commonly, they pay hourly rates or a fee based on the number of index entries. Academic and technical books with specialized vocabulary and concepts take longer to index and involve a higher fee. Biographies and histories pay less, while juvenile books and shorter volumes require less time and have lower indexing budgets. The publisher issues a contract for each project, specifying the deadline, the work to be performed and the fee payable for each galley page to be indexed.
  
  

Fees

• Fees for professional indexing range from about $3 to $7.50 per indexable page. Indexers will charge more if the book has foreign language text, charts or tables to be indexed, or smaller print that brings about a higher-than-average number of words per page. In addition, indexers may charge extra if more than one index has to be done for a book -- for example, subject and author indexes. Most indexing contracts are the result of an estimate done by the indexer and negotiation of the fee and the deadline. Publishers pay a higher rate if the job is a rush.
  
  

Extras

• The indexer will charge more if the page proofs are revised and the pagination changes, in which case the index entries must be double-checked for accuracy. If the editor asks for further revision of the index, or has made alterations to the text itself, the indexer will charge an hourly rate for the extra work required.
  
  

Annual Earnings

• The annual earnings of a book indexer vary widely; the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics does not keep statistics on what indexers make. Freelancers who work at indexing only part time, and who have just begun finding clients, may earn just a few hundred dollars a year. Experienced indexers working full-time on complex technical or reference works, and completing a project a week, may earn an average of $1,200 per assignment or about $50,000 a year, before costs and taxes.