My only tip is to listen to great—but not super distracting—music while indexing! I also think it's kind of fun 😅 (But I'm also, to some degree, team "don't do it!" I very rarely see author-created indexes done correctly, and there are so many great indexing professionals out there. While I think it's a really cool process, I think a lot of authors add them when they don't need them and/or struggle when they could have just hired a pro. I'm a fan of either buckling down to learn the ins and outs, or getting someone else to do it for ya!)

If you're talking about the Skool app, it's great—but so is the desktop interface, if you really don't love apps! I access Skool exclusively from my computer (not my phone) so that I can type with a real keyboard. I'm old school like that 😂 You definitely have options! 😊

This is a super interesting question! Can you clarify your question a bit further? Ultimately, what you can do with a book written for hire will depend on the terms of your contract with the publisher, so sometimes you have a lot of flexibility, while sometimes, the compensation for the project is the biggest benefit you get out of the experience. Either way, though, congrats on writing a book that's still holding strong 20 years after publication!

Welcome! 😊

@Jeremy Shapiro I love your percentage breakdown! Just in case it helps—next time, it's totally fair to ask your editor to make some of those changes "silently" (without tracking)! Especially if you work with the same editor again and trust them, you could give them a list of the changes you're comfortable with them making sans tracking (ex. "It's fine not to track fixes to smart quotes, spaces, or dashes this time around!"). The Chicago Manual of Style actually explicitly says (in CMOS 2.85/2.90) that the specific items you listed can be corrected without tracking, so most editors will be totally comfortable with that request. 😊 (Though importing changes from Docs to Word can always come with some issues, which is why it's usually recommended to stick to Word after the content editing stage if at all possible! But that's a nerdy editing soapbox for another day.)

@Darla Mondragon To clarify, this definitely isn't something most people need to think much about or stress over! A lot of editors make those changes "silently" automatically and don't even need to be asked. But it's just something that's nice to know if too much markup feels like it could be overwhelming (or has been overwhelming in the past)! If you're working with an editor for the first time, I definitely wouldn't worry about this at all! 😊