By Phil Roberts, 5-14-23
Indexing–the work, the rewards. We’re frequently asked why there is a plaque next to the front door proclaiming the building as “Index House.” The answer, regrettable, is that it represents another age–and a dead industry that, at one time, we were among those leading the nation in practicing–book indexing. For several years, we were “Top Indexers” for three national publishing houses, making us eligible for membership in the prestigious British Society of Indexers, the top trade guild.
When we were finishing our respective doctoral programs, it wasn’t uncommon that we receive an urgent message on a Friday afternoon from the publisher, often in the Bay area, to “drop everything and get us back the index for this book” by the end of the weekend. They’d say the book was going to press on Monday and an index, conceptual–not word only–was essentially the last piece of the project. Some were indexes for very complicated manuals for computer programs, when it was best indexing all 1,200 pages in one setting, even doing it all night, to avoid having to relearn specific definitions.
We always completed assignments in time–except for once when we had the job done, but I waited, intending to send the finished index via modem during the seventh inning stretch of a World Series game. To my surprise, an earthquake delayed the game and knocked out our publisher’s computers. The Bay area series made history for baseball– notoriety for me. After each index, we would cut up the “book” to make paper slips for the next job.
We told almost no one about our indexing, especially after the provost met with me one day and warned that I’d not gain tenure unless I’d dispensed with all but university-assigned obligations. But indexing was too lucrative to give up. Our reward frequently would be a big check–at least for graduate students trying to survive on TAship wages and, later, bottom-rung assistant professors’ salaries! We cashed checks for the weekend rush jobs, sometimes for as much as $5,000-$6,000! (Even our self-published Wyoming Almanac didn’t pay that well). We were still top indexers when we came to Laramie, but the weekend unpredictability of overnight delivery was an impediment that depressed our business. Nonetheless, we made enough money to put a sizeable down payment on the house!
When we were indexing, we had hints that our jobs would disappear eventually, as computer experts developed more sophisticated programs. Tiring of indexing huge books on computer programming, I was pleasantly surprised one day when our editor asked if I’d like to do an index for “an architecture book.” Anticipating Corinthian columns and Queen Anne-style turrets, imagine the shock when I discovered he meant “the architecture of a computer chip”! We indexed a bank manual for training officers for Citibank. We indexed a series of short books for Bedford books, many of them biographies of famous people. We indexed many academic “first” books, even helping new authors in conceptualizing difficult points.
Regardless of subject, we continued in the “business,” even indexing many books, “sent” to us by modem, for commercial and university presses in Britain and the Middle East. One memorable job was an index for a book written by the heir to the now-mythical kingship of Egypt, published in English by American University in Cairo Press. I finished the index just a week or so before leaving in May 2000 for my usual spring visit in Cairo. This trip promised to be eventful because the author of the book we indexed, Prince Hasan Hasan, had invited me personally to the book release event–dinner and party, to be held the day after my arrival in Egypt. His father, the heir to the puppet throne of Egypt (under total British control at the time) had been among the founders of the then-banned Wafd party with the stated goal of running out the British and creating an independent constitutional monarchy (modeled after Britain). That was enough for the British overlords to bypass him and crown his younger brother, cutting Hasan out of the line of succession. Instead, the successor’s son and heir was the notorious King Farouk, Hasan’s cousin. We all know what happened!
I excitedly waited for my flight out of Concourse A of DIA in Denver. About an hour before departure, I picked up a Rocky Mountain News, discarded by a passenger on an earlier flight. I casually glanced through the news and the obituary roundup from around the world. There, in stark letters, I read: “Died, Cairo–Egypt’s Prince Hasan Hasan…..” No joy that time in a book release. I was there in time for the small informal wake in the prince’s honor, with editor Neal Hewison and editor-in-chief the late Mark Linz…. (To be continued)