Subtopics Are Key in an Index


As Carol Roberts says, an index can make the difference between a nonfiction book and a well-dressed nonfiction book. It is the necessary accessory to set any book apart from its peers, to rise to the occasion of excellence.

I recently indexed a book on US national security strategy, from 1920 through 2010. The index was 24 single-spaced pages long, as you might imagine when dealing with such a subject.

The index for the book, in order to be useful to any reader, had to be extremely detailed. It had to include all of the US administrations, the countries involved in US national security strategy discussions, and all of the actors.

To begin, I did a general swipe through the book, indexing the general terms and players: treaties, countries, leaders, etc. Then, I went page by page through the book, fine-tuning the topics and the indexed items.

For example, initially, I had the Eisenhower administration. By the end of my indexing task, I had

Eisenhower administration, 85
bilateral and multilateral alliances, 102, 107, 114, 118
building interstate highways, 101
conservative, 102
containment of China, 107, 108
crisis in West Berlin, 113–114
damaged relations with Britain and England, 112
decrease in conventional forces, 102–104, 114, 118
downslide in Europe, 113–115
drawn into Middle East affairs, 110, 111, 118
effective NSC staff, 117
end of Korean War, 107
entry of Germany into NATO, 104

SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), 102, 104
strategic bilateral agreements in Asia, 107
strategy, 100–104
sustained domestic growth, 101
vital bipartisanship in US foreign policy, 85, 118
waning years, 113–115

Eisenhower Doctrine, 102, 110, 112

Eisenhower Years (1953–1961), 100–112

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 56, 100–101
as SACEUR for NATO, 88–90
D-Day command, 61
wise presidential leadership, 101, 116

These topics and subtopics listings made the information much easier to access quickly and intelligently. The more detail you can provide for the readers, the more powerful the index will be. And the easier you make it for readers to determine what each mention of a topic contains, the happier the reader will be.

For example, for Saddam Hussein, who had a small part in the book, I could simply have listed:

Hussein, Saddam, 6, 253, 266-268, 270, 276, 286, 322–324, 336, 361-363, 373.

But this would have required the reader to search each page or page range to find the particular information they were interested in. A better index was created using subtopics:

Hussein, Saddam, 6, 253, 266, 286, 322–324, 336. See also Desert Storm Campaign
“mother of all battles, 270
brutal dictator, 361
menace to Middle Eastern security, 361, 362–363
resistance to diplomacy, 268, 270, 323, 363–364
survival of regime after Desert Storm, 276
threat if allowed to remain in power, 373
threat to Saudi Arabia, 267
threats against Israel, 267
UN Security Council Resolution 1441, 364
WMD (weapons of mass destruction). See WMDs (weapons of mass destruction)

With these entries, a reader could much more quickly find specific topics about Saddam Hussein.

Subtopics are key in a superb index. Creating pertinent subtopics requires a great deal of attention to detail, and the ability to organize, but an index rich in subtopics adds great value to any manuscript.

Why Hire an Indexer?

A first question you might ask when considering hiring an indexer is, why do you need an index?

Short answers: If you want your readers to be able to easily access the information in your book, then you need a good index. If you want a good index, you need to hire a professional indexer.

A professional indexer knows how to catalogue the information in your book into easy-to-follow topics and listing of subject matter. A professional indexer is a bit of a mind reader, able to intuit what your readers will want to search in your book, and how they might go about searching for those topics.

Picture a map of an city’s train lines, with colors indicating each train, and the lines tracing the route of each train. It’s the same for indexes: each color indicates an individual thread, and the lines trace that thread through the pages of the book, showing even where topics interconnect. A good index is a detailed map of the book.


Indexers bring fresh eyes to the subject matter, sometimes finding connections that you as the author might have missed. Because indexers are farther removed from the subject, they can bring a new perspective to the subject matter.

Indexing is a deceptive endeavor, seemingly simple, but to truly appreciate an index, one must understand the intuition, attention to detail, and constitutional organizational skills that are part and parcel of the task.

Why hire an indexer? Perfect answer. Because you want to enhance the value of your book.

No, a Computer Cannot Index Your Book

Indexers are a group of professionals who (for the moment) remain inured to the threat of computer programs replacing us. Certainly, there are computer programs that can help with the indexing project, but (to date) no program can achieve what the human mind can do.

The existing computer programs create a concordance of words in the text, listing each occurrence of a word. But such listing provides no context, has no gauge for the importance of that word on the page at that time. For example, in a book about World War II, a computer program might list every single occurrence of the word Germany. Imagine the list of index pages for that term alone!

A human indexer, on the other hand, would be able to subdivide mentions of Germany, into subheadings such as pre-WWI Germany, post-WWI Germany, history of Germany, pre-WWII Germany, arms build-up in Germany post-WWI, etc. These subheadings would provide some context for the hundreds of mentions of Germany in the text. Without subheadings and context, a reader would be condemned to visit each page to determine relevance to their search.

As Sam Leith says, “It would be a cliche to say that indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world. But unsung they generally are: no indexer usually expects or receives credit by name in books where everyone from the font designer to the snapper of the author photograph tends to get a solemn shout-out. And heroes they are, too: the index is, in any nonfiction book, more useful than almost anything else in the apparatus. It is a map of the text; a cunningly devised series of magical shortcuts that can in the good case save a scholar many hours of work.”

Human indexers can intuit and identify connections between topics, something that no indexing program has yet achieved. For that, you need a human brain.

Bite that, computer programs. Humans still rule.