Curating; or, building the manuscript index

Back in early 2018, I composed a series of blog posts about getting started with turning a dissertation into a book, including researching the publishing process, targeting series, oft-circulated myths, and, in five parts, how to fund it. Then, at the end of the revision process and on the cusp of drafting new content, I wrote on the strategies for revision I had found most useful, seeming an appropriate moment to reflect on what exactly the revision process looks like. Such nuts-and-bolts queries I have found difficult to pin down from those who do have books, as well as in all the metaliterature, so I decided to document them here while I take time off from my normal reviewing.

I am happy to say the draft manuscript is in for final review! In that grey time of the holidays where all one can do is wait and hope, I have a pair of posts reflecting on the process driven by data I collected each step of the way. In this post, I offer a process to tackle the dreaded index, whose compiling has greatly changed in the wake of new Style tools in MS Word and Google Docs. This is something I realized you can totally do for yourself without a tremendous amount of labor or farming the task out to an inexperienced (grad) student.

It’s alive! The manuscript lives together in print for the first time. October 1, 2019.
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