2020 conference

If you have a bias toward traditional books, you may have been pleased to hear that e-books are still nowhere close to outselling print books?

The predictions of print’s decline have been wild. In 1999, Microsoft declared that by 2018, 90% of all books sold would be e-books. Then in 2013, Price Waterhouse Cooper presented a more moderate view: that e-books would only surpass print books in 2017. Now it appears that e-book sales have actually flattened at around 20-30% of all books sold.

We understand the easy appeal of the e-book format for fiction. But when it comes to non-fiction, more than one indexer has admitted to owning a copy of the same book in both formats. The story is usually like this: We needed the book right away, and it was so easy to download it from the Internet. Besides, we could take the book with us everywhere on our mobile devices. But then we turned around and also bought the print version because that’s really how we want to read non-fiction books.

Our publishing clients understand this, and many are producing both formats. But publishers also want to create a better e-book by having the index embedded. And for many indexers and publishers, embedded indexing is new territory.

You may have heard that Kate Mertes has been working with the Church Historians Press indexing the Joseph Smith Papers. In fact, she won the ASI/EIS Publishing Award for the index to Volume 3 in 2015. Kate told us that her work with the Press is ongoing: “We’ve transitioned from standard stand-alone indexing to an embedded system, and the press has enthusiastically invited, listened to, and implemented my ideas on how to make this work.”

We are delighted that Kate is coming to the ISC/SCI conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland this June 12-13 to give a presentation on her experiences. We concur with Kate that this is timely, “given how many indexers are dealing with this now, and it would show how you can move ahead technologically and produce quality indexes.”

Visit the conference page for details.

A popular topic on ISC’s email discussion list this month was music to index by. It was generally agreed that it should be instrumental, or at least no English lyrics. Yet, as someone mentioned, when we were kids we found it easier to do our homework with the radio on. Is it younger brains, different tasks, or a bit of both?

Writers might do their best in a bustling coffee shop. Crafts and trades people, if they don’t have a radio playing, might whistle. Why do we seek out constant noise to keep us in the flow?

A few years ago, the founder of Focus@Will, a scientifically-based music streaming service, was in an interview. (I can’t find the podcast, otherwise I would link to it.) He painted a vivid picture of a prehistoric person, shall we say, sitting on the savannah, steadily chipping away to make a tool. Every several minutes, his subconscious notices the quiet. It prods him to break from his task and look around. If his brain didn’t keep interrupting him like this, he’d be taken down by a predator. It’s impossibly to prove, of course—but it’s a lovely image of what might be going on your brain when you need to focus.

It suggests that when indexers have music playing while they work, their subconscious is kept occupied, freeing the brain to stay focused for periods longer than several minutes—which is what we strive for when indexing.

Productivity and efficiency tricks are just some of the things we talk about on our email discussion list. It’s a great place to get help from our peers on all kinds of indexing and business issues. If you’re an indexer and you haven’t yet joined one of these lists, do so now.

And do think about coming to the ISC Conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland June 12-13. Not only will you get more help and ideas—you’ll get to meet and hang out with these peers.