Eight indexers, eight indexes, one book: an examination of indexing practices

For two book indexing conferences in 2025, eight indexers prepared full indexes to the same book, then discussed their decision-making processes and the challenges they faced. This article builds on those initial conversations by performing an in-depth analysis of the eight indexes with the aim of showing what we can learn from this kind of exercise. It considers index structure, usability, and how to tackle conundrums like fictional names. As part of the process, it also examines whether regional differences are detectable between the five North American and three British indexers in the work they produced.