Built by an indexer and book lover, for the people who write books.
SeeAlso came out of professional indexing work, not out of a search for a market to exploit. We’ve done the job the hard way, and we built the tool that lets authors do it the easy way — without cutting corners.
The problem was never the indexing.
After 11 years of professional indexing, Andrew kept running into the same thing: the intellectual work — reading the book, choosing the terms, shaping the entries — went quickly. The slow part was everything around it. Reading a proof in one window, building the index in another, copying terms across, typing page numbers by hand, checking alphabetization, repeating the same formatting on every project.
He also kept meeting authors facing the same wall with none of the tools. Their publisher wanted an index, and their choices were to pay for one or wrestle it into existence in Word.
So we built the tool he wanted: one workspace, centered on the page proofs, that handles the mechanical work and leaves every decision with the person who knows the book. Now SeeAlso is in the hands of the people who know their books best — the authors.
Our Philosophy
Here's what we believe, and what we put into SeeAlso.
Readers deserve great indexes.
Everyone on the team is a reader (some call us nerds) and we know what it's like to leave a promising-looking book behind if the index doesn't make sense.
Always respect the craft.
Indexing is skilled work. A tool that puts it in authors’ hands should carry that skill in its design, because it was built by someone who has it.
The software should adapt to you.
There's no single correct order to build an index, and the tool doesn't pretend there is. You work your way.
Build for the future of books.
Books and their indexes are culture. We're building SeeAlso to celebrate a culture of literacy and reading well into the 21st century and beyond.
Meet the Team
Andrew Ascherl, PhD
Indexer, Sales, and Communications
Andrew is our lead indexer and the core of SeeAlso — the professional whose method authors now work with. He has a doctorate in comparative literature from SUNY Buffalo, where he focused on the intersection of literature, psychoanalysis, and Latin American politics. In addition to his hundreds of indexed books, Andrew has worked as a developmental and copy editor and proofreader, and is the translator of 7 books and several articles. His favorite indexed book is The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology by Slavoj Žižek.
Julie Heusinkveld
Administration and strategy
Julie does everything Andrew needs to make sure SeeAlso gets into your hands: finance, operations, marketing, business strategy. Her background in economics and complex-systems science makes her the holistic thinker who keeps the team on track. Julie is a cancer survivor, trained hypnotherapist, and jack-of-all-trades. Her favorite indexed book is Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison.
Try SeeAlso now.
Start a free trial, upload your proofs, and see what indexing your own book feels like.