I am trying to understand which books are selected for indexing.  I know some of these books are indexed by members.  For example

A Treasury of Great Recipes: Famous Specialties of the World's Foremost Restaurants Adapted for the American Kitchen by Mary Price and Vincent Price

has 117 members with this book and yet it has not been indexed.  OTOH, some of the books with less members owning the books have been indexed. 

I started indexing the The Book of Tofu sometime back and realized I probably picked one of the hardest ones to index.  I'm about 3/4 finished but I need to get back into it again. 

Are newly published books with fewer owners but over 50 members indexed first?

One reason for the Vincent Price book not being indexed yet (as with New Doubleday Cookbook and a number of others on 100+ members' bookshelves) is that it contains so many recipes -- close to 1000.  That means it will take as much indexer time as four or five typical new cookbooks. 

Another factor is the count of Requests to Index -- a book that's on many members' shelves but has only a few requests will fall behind one with many requests to index in the EYB indexing queue, even if the more-requested one is on fewer bookshelves.

A big book, like the Price or Doubleday, is going to need a real spike in requests to index to overcome the hurdle of extra size. A similar but even more intense problem is posed by one of the great books of classical French cooking, the Escoffier Cookbook: on almost 300 bookshelves -- but with a daunting 3000 recipes.  Back in the early days of Member Indexing, an edition of Larousse Gastronomique, with close to 4000 recipes, was EYB indexed -- and I note that very few members have it on their shelves. (It's on mine, because my parents bought it as part of a hard-to-resist book club deal in the 1960s.)  Possibly that unrewarding experience has colored the approach to other big but little-requested tomes.

Thanks for the explanation. 

ellabee's explanation is quite correct. Our indexing chart is a combination of the number of Bookshelves plus the number of index requests we get from members. We take into account the age of the book and how many recipes it has. We also have to consider how much a book may be used - just because it is on members' Bookshelves doesn't mean it is ever cooked from, the Escoffier book being a good example.

We don't have unlimited resources for indexing so we have to decide using the factors I mentioned, which books will have the most benefit for the most number of members. Newly published books are indexed because we think they are the type of books our members will be interested in - we know many members like to see that a book is indexed before they decide whether to buy it.

Thanks for the info Jane.  It makes sense.

Hi there - I have a really cheeky question for you guys...is it possible to buy indexing time? I have several cookbooks on my shelf that aren't indexed. I am currently indexing one, but it keeps getting moved to the bottom of the list of things to do...and your indexing team has practice and waaay more experience doing the work! I'd happily pay to get some of the unindexed titles in my collection indexed - benefiting me and others with the same books on their shelves. Obviously, the indexer would need to get a hand on a copy of the book and I'm not sure what a suitable price would be - but if it's feasible, please let me know!

Cheers, Mary

Hi Mary - this isn't something we have been asked for before but I suppose in principle it is feasible. One difficulty would be quoting to you how much the indexing will cost per book. Our professional indexers are paid according to the number of ingredients in the index. If you gave us the number of recipes we could give you an estimate based on the average number of ingredients per recipe from our historic indexing - 6.5 per recipe. As you mention, the other issue may be getting hold of the book if it is an older title. But email us and we will try to work it out for you.