CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • March 17, 2013 at 6:28 pm #64424
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi, I am about three quarters through creating a 600+ page illustrated book.

    I have each chapter as a separate InDesign document and intend to assemble the book only when the project is complete.

    My question is – can I begin indexing the completed chapters BEFORE the book is complete ?

    When the book is created will the index references in the separate chapters update with the complete book page numbers ?

    I would prefer to start the massive job of indexing now rather than wait until the whole project is completed.

    Any sugestions gratefully received.

    Thanks in advance,

    Graham

  • March 18, 2013 at 8:13 pm #64435
    Tom Pardy

    Member

    I don’t consider myself an expert on book construction, having only done it a few dozen times but, in my experience, constructing an index is best regarded as virtually the last thing you do before printing the book. If you construct the index earlier in the project, any changes you make (such as adding a sentence that causes one of the chapters to be one page longer) will be ignored by the index you have already made, making its page references unreliable. The index is not really interactive — it doesn’t adjust for subsequent changes you make. (I stand to be corrected on this if I have misunderstood something.)

    I have also found that creating a book file (.indb) fairly early in the process is also a good idea. I usually create the book file when I have the first two chapter files created (even if each of them only contains a few pages or maybe even just a few words) and then, as additional chapter files are created, I add them to the book. Each of the chapters can still be worked on individually (though it is a good idea to open them from within the book file rather than in isolation) and you don’t need to have any chapter, other than the one you are working on, open at any given time.

    Yes, indexing is a massive task. For that reason it is a good idea to avoid the likelihood of having to redo it several times.

  • March 19, 2013 at 12:03 pm #64442
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi Furry,

    Many thanks for your very helpful reply.

    I think if you have managed to construct ” a few dozen books ” then you can safely consider yourself an expert !!!

    This will be just my second published book and I consider myself very much a beginner.

    I will certainly follow your advice and create my book file now, with the already finished chapters, but I agree with you , I only want to make the index ONCE !!

    Must admit I was hoping that once the index references were placed in the text that they would update automatically as the book was assembled. Maybe a feature in a future version update to InDesign ?

• Author
  Posts