Index West is the indexing business of Kari Kells, co-author of Inside Indexing: The Decision-Making Process.
I am dedicated to creating quality indexes at competitive rates. My Master’s degree in Information Science provides me with an indispensable background in information organization and access. While working in libraries, I’ve frequently seen people reject books with inadequate indexes (or lacking indexes altogether) even if those books included useful information. Instead, many readers will choose less useful books simply because they find their topics of interest in the indexes.
Ya know how sometimes after reading a book you need to relocate a passage of a text, but you can’t find the concept in the book’s index? Even when you hunt for several related terms? This can be very frustrating and it can negatively impact sales. By working with trained, professional indexers who write quality indexes, this is unlikely to happen to your books.
Indexes are valuable interfaces between the ideas in an author’s text and terms that come to mind as readers look for specific information. As my clients can attest, indexes are also powerful selling points for potential customers in bookstores.
If you’re an editor or author, you might want to take a look at the kinds of questions I’ll ask when contacted about a project that needs an index.
New and potential indexers will probably find it useful to check out information about my consultation and review services. In addition, my page about indexing and indexers might come in handy.
All of your contact with Index West will be with me. I do not send your indexing projects to subcontractors unless we’ve discussed it before we sign a contract. If you contact me about a project for which I’m unavailable or which requires expertise that I don’t have, I’ll be happy to refer you to other indexers.
