Creating an index for a book used to be a tedious process. You would have to read through the entire manuscript, jotting down all the terms and ideas you wanted to appear in the index, and then manually sort the list into alphabetical order. Nowadays, software can generate an index automatically from a word-processing file, but this system only creates entries when the indexed word appears in the text.
In the olden days, when creating an index for a book, you'd read each page of the manuscript. Each time you encountered a term or an idea that you wanted to appear in the index, you'd write it down along with the page number. When this process was finished, you'd painstakingly re-sort your list into alphabetical order. Problem: Life is too short. Today, many indexes are prepared by software, which generates an index automatically from your word-processing file. Problem: This system creates index entries only when the actual indexed word appears in the text. If there are 5 pages on the history of the Macintosh, but the actual words "Macintosh history" don't appear on each page, no entry is created. Solution: Use EZIndex! This pair of software tools gives you the efficiency of a software-indexing robot, but the quality and control of a by-hand indexer. If you, like many book authors, are charged for indexing by your publisher, volunteer to do the index yourself. Using EZIndex can save you thousands of dollars on a typical book!
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