Book indices

or indexes, if you prefer.

Just got two new books today, one from a private publisher and one from a university press. Neither of these books have an index. Is this becoming more common in the digital book age?

 

I really don't want to "dish" on the authors or publishers, so I'll not mention specifics. One is from a university press and the other from a well-known religious publisher. Neither of the books are large tomes, but both reside kind of in what I would call a "scholarly with popular appeal" category. Both authors have PhD's and are instructors in colleges of religion Both books are well footnoted. I'm not sure my expectations are always realistic, but I expected each of them to have an index. I am just wondering whether this might be a trend to save money? If you get the electronic version of the book you can search for anything you want. "Hey, you, if you want all that, buy the Kindle version!"

Another thing I've noticed about indices -- quite a few books that I gotten in the past several years have indices that are very poorly done. Often the page numbers are off, and things one might expect to be included in the index just aren't there. I could understand this regarding books if I did the index, but I don't expect it from large professional publishers.