Post originally by Anonymous at 2004-10-05 12:02:43
Converted from Phorums BB System

This one's anonymous for obvious reasons. It's more long-winded than I expected, but given the subject matter, I thought I'd try to pull the curtain aside and explain at least one industry person's reasons why problems with indices are so common. Please note that these are all my own personal experiences and opinions, and I'm not speaking for other editor/developers by any means.

First off, a quick word in defense of the WW folks. I've been pretty closely associated with the company's staff for a few years now, and I personally have never heard anyone from White Wolf say that "Usability and editing are for geeks who don't get the whole gothic-punk sensibility of us supercool people at White Wolf," since many of them quite proudly fit into the "geek" role themselves. Most of the time I've found the staff people mercifully free of the "supercool" affectations of many of their fans, and are almost all pretty approachable and pleasant. At least that's how I've always seen them (other folks' experiences notwithstanding). And, as someone who's been involved in the editing and preparation of a lot of books (including some from WW as well as a good number of others), I absolutely guarantee you that I have never, ever thought anything of the kind, and I'd probably kick anyone who did say such things right in the... shins...

I can tell you from personal experience that there's a reason that indices get left out of some books -- a good index is hard to do, it takes a very long time and most of the books are done on a very tight deadline.

As an editor or developer I could have created indices on the books that I worked on. I chose not to, not because I thought that "indices are for the weak" (which I suppose could be translated into latin and used as someone's motto), but because the books take a long time to create and usually by the time I'm finished I've got very little time left. Also, when a book is running long and we don't want to cut content, something has to give, and very often it's the index.

And there's one more thing that should be considered. You can't create a complete index in the editing stage, since you don't know what pages subjects will appear on in the final layout. Editing is done with a word processing program, while layout is done in a DTP program such as Quark Xpress or Pagemaker (this is a practical consideration... it's not really possible to edit directly in a DTP program, since it would change the layout, etc., and I'm not very good with DTP programs anyway).

When you're editing in MS Word, all you can do is come up with the subjects and XX for page numbers ("Hit points... XX" or "Torpor... XX") because you don't know what page they're going to be on until it's gone through layout. At that point, either the layout staffer (who has lots of other stuff to take care of) has to change the XX's into correct page numbers, or it needs to go back to the developer/editor, who then will have to take MORE time to to through and make the required changes. Then finally it can go to the printer, but by this time, the printer is probably fuming because you told him you'd get galleys to him three weeks ago and he's now got a huge hole in his schedule.

My experience is that most companies don't do indices. And (as this review implies) a bad index is almost worse than no index at all. We all work for very little money on very tight deadlines, and usually don't have the time or patience to sit down with a long manuscript (which we've usually labored on for weeks or months) and create a detailed index. <whine>It's just tooooo harrrrrrd.</whine>

Yeah, know... It sounds like I'm making excuses. Really, I'm not. I am one of those folks who really appreciates a good index (say what you will about WotC's D20 books, the indices rock), and I'm not about to sit here and claim that I'm somehow justified in leaving them out because "I'm the pro and you're just geeky fanboys and -girls." Like I said, I'm as big a geek as everyone else in the industry, and I'm proud of it. Believe me, I will try in future to get my larger projects indexed, but it will be in the face of all the challenges that I listed above.

Hopefully, that will give you folks a slightly better idea of the process that's involved and why sometimes we decide to forego including an index.

*whew* An awful lot of words for a somewhat outre topic, dontcha think? Before turning the flamethrowers on me, know that this is an issue that has troubled me for a long time and that I have yet to find a satisfactory solution for.

Keep gaming, brothers and sisters. It may be all we have.