One thing Sarah Palin & I have in common

From GAWKER's 10 Juicy items in the sneak peaks of Sarah Palin's historical-fiction memoir (#10) :

No Flipping to the Back. Second-most conspicuous absence: an index, which Halperin says is "subtle revenge on the party's Washington establishment, whose members tend to flip to the back pages and scan for their own names." This is possible, but I'm much more inclined to believe that her editors plumb forgot that this peculiar, vapid woman they were working with is an actual politician, who actually interacts with important people, and slipped into Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soul mode by accident.

Andrew Sullivan takes note and links to Samuel P. Jacobs at the Daily Beast , who develops the "vengeance" theme at greater length and offers a more probable explanation:

One answer: time. It takes two to three weeks to put together a good index, says Peter Osnos, the founder of Public Affairs, who has published Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, Scott McClellan, and nearly every other Washington macher over the years. Cutting an index can mean the difference between getting a book into stores well before Thanksgiving or missing the holiday sales season altogether. Speed is at an even greater premium now, in the age of e-books and instant downloads on the Kindle. And of course, skipping the index means fewer pages—and fewer dollars spent to bring the book to market. “Every penny counts,” Osnos said.

See my post Negative Reviews and Indexes if you want to see why I relate.