Seasonal Trends to Indexing Work

It makes sense with large publishers who focus on traditional "Spring" and "Fall" lists that there would be cycles in when indexing work is needed. On the other hand, my experience with small presses is that work could come at any time during the year. Between these two types of clients, I've always been able to get as much work as I wanted, which these days is certainly less than full-time. At my age, there are other things I like to do with my "retirement."

However, after blocking out a full month for a massive indexing project and passing up several opportunities, I am sitting here into the second week when the job was supposed to be in hand with only "we're so sorry that things are delayed."

Any subscribers care to comment on their experience with seasonal surges and lags?

For Indexers Willing to Experiment

Web sites with more complicated pages might well benefit from the article below on Pro Blog Tips:

Choosing Page Names For Your Web Site

Just When It Might Have Been Safe to Go Into the Vista Waters!

Windows 7: The Anti-Vista?

Link posted without comment!

Indexing Meeting Announcement

The Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter Fall Workshops will be held October 24 and 25, 2008 at the Hilton Garden Inn Des Plaines, Illinois.

Featured topics are: Indexing Editing, Publishing Cycles, and a workshop "Taming the Wild Project List; Organizing Tools for the Complex Life."

When It's Time to Replace A Printer

This looks like a good site to keep up with developments and reviews of printers:

Special Report on The Power of Print

The "Quick Printing Without the High Price" article by Jamie Bsales listed suggests another source for business cards (per a recent discussion on indexersdiscussionlist).

Indexer Authors

I came across an interesting site if any subscribers are also would-be (or published) authors.

It's run by a production editor at "one of the most prestigious literary publishing houses in New York" and seems to have lots of useful advice.

The site is Be Your Own Editor

Sorry about the three day hiatus here--seems as if nothing much was going on related to indexing in the news.

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Romancing the Rankings: Five SEO Tips

An article by Jill Whalen posted on SmallBusinessComputing.com makes an interesting point in paragraph number 3. I had not thought before about working more on keywords on individual web pages on my site, concentrating rather on the home (index) page which introduces everything. However, I can see some attraction here since it might broaden the base of retrieval on searches.

Reservation Fees for Indexers

I don't belong to the Editorial Freelancers Association, but I've seen other indexers mention it. In connection with a big but somewhat dubious project that would require setting aside some substantial time, I wondered about things that could go wrong.

I cover cancellation with less than two weeks notice and late payment in my contract. However, since it is possible that I would have to block out time for this project even before we get to the deposit stage (it's too convoluted to explain why), I was curious about the possibility of requesting a "hold" fee--which is the way I was thinking of it, the way some libraries talk about "holding" books (in academic circles it's usually putting them on reserve.

So I searched the EFA and found the following useful information.

"Reservation Fees. Another way to deal with the possibility that a project will be delivered late or will be canceled is to negotiate a reservation fee, essentially an advance to reserve the freelancer's time. A freelancer who agrees to set aside a lengthy period for a long-term project or who commits to a project well in advance may require partial prepayment."

More Data Backup Possibilities

SOHO Storage Needs Grab Titans' Attention
By Judy Mottl

Here's an interesting article about coming developments in backup softare for small office/home office users (SOHO). I have used EMC backup software for years (mentioned in the above article). It was (is?) called Retrospect. Apparently it is now part of a broader solution called Lifeline.

However, it is targeted at OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers), which presumably means it might come with some pieces of equipment such as external and/or RAID drives.

Recipe for Happy Indexing—PSP

Place, Space, and Pace: Essential Ingredients in Staying Happy while Indexing.

A felicitous partnership (between indexer and project) needs agreement or compromise in three areas: Place— Geography and housing; Space—Personal comfort level; and Pace—Lifestyle and time sense.

If the indexer approaches each new project with the following three factors in equilibrium, then he or she should be able to maintain a calm mind and relaxed body during the indexing work. If not, unhappiness, errors, and generation frustration may emerge. While the following may seem obvious, focusing on these three important, basic areas affecting the entire relationship may prevent future problems.

Place
If you hate a rainy environment but you live and work in Seattle, then there’s a good chance this will affect starting work on a new index, particularly in the wintertime. Climatic comfort level is another area where the indexer may have problems. For instance, if your office is on the second floor of an old house, with no air-conditioning, where the indoor temperature reaches the lower 90’s in the summer, then summoning the energy to keep going on an index, particularly a boring one, in the afternoon may be impossible.

Space
An important but often not well recognized facet of human behavior is called proxemics or personal space. Each different ethnic group or culture has different levels of what they define as personal space. Males and females have different definitions of personal space. Personal space is like an invisible bubble or shield that grows or shrinks depending on the situation. Keep just outside the bubble and people are comfortable; intrude and there is an immediate sense of awkwardness.

The French have a much smaller bubble than Americans. The Germans, on the other hand, prefer a space bubble about six inches larger than Americans. Arabian concepts of personal space are more like the French and smaller than Westerners. Typically these differences can affect business or diplomatic situations. To read more about proxemics, see a book by Hall, E. T. (1966). The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday.

When someone invades your personal space, the tendency is not only to feel uncomfortable, but also to back up, sometimes resulting in a kind of dance where one party moves forward and the other backwards. Lacking a wireless keyboard and mouse, this could be trouble.

How does this affect indexing work? Well, if you have family, do they at times intrude on your personal space while working? In a personal relationship, the existence of differing personal space comfort zones may be subtle and manifest itself in ways not clearly related to a space bubble. When concentrating on a difficult passage in a book, looking hard for clear index terms, your personal space may even extend outside of the office area.

Pace
This is the important factor of how you like to live your life, that is, your preferred life style, approach to time and sleeping patterns. If you’re an owl, who rarely gets going before 9:00 AM but are faced with a short deadline on a book and other factors make it impossible to work after noon on the last day, then your personal Pace may make it difficult to concentrate to the degree necessary to get work done in a quality fashion.

All these patterns and others may seem insignificant in the first blush of involvement with the indexing profession, but for a long and happy relationship, it is worth taking a serious look at PSP factors. Decide how you will handle these issues before getting into projects rather than after problems develop.

Pricing Large Jobs

Recently I was invited to bid on two different very big jobs--the kind of thing that involves lengthy runs of material from fifty to one hundred years.

It's not the first time in 35+ years of indexing that I've been in this situation. In fact, one of my very earliest jobs, an annual index to government proceedings, involved something that, with inflation would have been a five-figure job. I got that one and kept it for 20 years before turning it over to a mentoree. In that case, I was so naive/inexperienced that, if I remember correctly, I asked what they had been paying the previous indexer who retired. I added 10% and gave a bid. Fortunately, the agency bought it.

Later, though, particularly when the proposed work involves a non-profit, I have begun to wonder if by quoting a price that represents my best estimate of the work required--which turns out to be quite expensive--whether offering some kind of discount is justified.

I realize this is a personal decision--do I want to work for less than my time is normally worth in order to concentrate on one or more very large jobs, which at least would offer guaranteed income and known commitment rather than a month-to-month kind of scheduling thing. Is the trade off in a lower hourly income worth the benefit of more certainty? And of course, finally, can non-profits in particular afford this kind of price--or do I price myself out of the market.

I don't expect an answer here although any subscriber is certainly welcome to comment. I'm just rambling this morning because I have spent hours this week developing proposals for two such jobs that I strongly suspect will be seen as too expensive.

I also decided to offer this question to the indexersdiscussionlist.

Uninterruptible Power Supplies

This past week I found, following one of Seattle’s somewhat infrequent power outages—at least in my area-- that the UPS through which I run my PC and monitor failed. It should have provided me with sufficient time to do a safe shutdown. It did not.

I have (had) a Tripplite Smart USB UPS. After checking some things with Tripplite support, I learned that based on the serial number the battery was nearly six years old. I bought the UPS just over four years ago through Dell. At the time, the battery had a minimum life cycle of five years, and I was planning to replace it shortly. Based on some log data and statistics, according to Tripplite it appeared that, instead of keeping the battery disconnected while in storage, it was connected and ready to ship at any time from Dell. According to Tripplite support, this meant that it gradually weakened and, although it appeared to be holding a 100% charge, it was not. The result was the UPS wasn’t able to put out enough power to keep things running even for a few minutes. Fortunately, none of the equipment appears to have been damaged and I haven’t found any file corruption so far.

Dell of course had nothing to offer because of the age. It didn’t help my mood to have to cope with outsourced help with limited English communication skills. It was even more frustrating when the person asked questions like, “When did you buy your computer?” I said, “Six months ago, but what does that have to do with it? I didn’t buy it with this computer. I didn’t even buy it with the last computer; I bought it after the last computer and before this one.” That concept escaped the support person entirely. However, since I bought it to use with a computer that was out of warranty, although it wasn’t at the time I got the UPS, and even though the UPS was newer than the computer, I was out of luck. Further support suggestions, such as telling me that I should have checked on the age when I first bought it didn’t improve my disposition.

I wasn’t expecting some kind of free replacement. I did expect that since Dell sold me a battery that was already 30% through its useful life, they might offer some small discount on a new one. Finally, after asking three times to speak to a supervisor, I got an offer for a 15% discount on a new battery. When I asked how I could be sure a new battery would not actually be several years old and been sitting on the shelf connected, the supervisor told me that I could check the model number to determine age. This person didn’t even understand the difference between a model number that could exist for years and a serial number that identified a specific unit.

As a replacement, I did a lot of research and settled on an APC UPS, which I bought locally. One of the things I did before I settled on a brand was call their Tech Support departments with some simple questions. Besides APC having a good reputation anyway, the thing that settled it in my mind was that each time I called APC tech support I did not have to go through a rigmarole giving name, rank, serial number, etc. Even more importantly, each time I called, I got native English speakers, with names like Jack, Mike, or George, who were all located in the United States.

So now I am safe again from power outages and voltage variations, with a healthy reserve of backup power (four battery outlets and two other surge protected), plugging in PC, two LCD monitors, external hard drive, and with room for one more device. On the way to this point, I learned that it wasn’t enough to just total up the number of amps you needed, you also had to consider the output wattages of the devices connected. Some UPS brands may have the same listed VA (volt amps) but provide differing amounts of output wattage.

So, I guess every little potential catastrophe can also be a learning experience.

Home Offices and Legal Issues

An article posted today to another blogspot site raises some good points about legal issues of working at home.

ISSUES TOUCHING FREELANCE MARKETING

Principles of Creating a Good Business Web Site

This article strikes me as having some excellent advice. I have seen some indexers web sites that tend to violate some of these principles, particularly with the use of fancy fonts and animations.

Using Colors in Web Site Design

Although the author doesn't seem to know a lot about literate writing (or correct English), the link below does furnish some interesting thoughts about color and Web site design.

Colour Wheel Theory