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What is an index?

An index is
-A vital reference guide to your book
-What consumers want and need in products
-Something you don't want to write yourself.

Look in the back of a school textbook, and you probably will find an index.  Yes, people write these professionally because indexes are hard to write.  As Sue Weinlein Cook, editor for Malhavoc Press, wrote,
"I think my own recent experience might be typical of how the industry looks at indexing:  people think they can do it -- they sure don’t want to pay someone else do it -- until they try. Then either they discover (like I did) that it would have been well worth the money to have a pro do it, or they come up with a half-assed index they made using some dumb program, and they’re perfectly happy with it (but the [readers] tear it apart)."

From a Professional Indexer:
"The ocean flows of online information are all streaming together, and the access tools are becoming absolutely critical. If you don't index it, it doesn't exist. It's out there but you can't find it, so it might as well not be there."
-Barbara Quint, ASI San Diego Conference, 1994

For more information on indexes and indexing, see the American Society for Indexing website.

Can't a computer create an index?
That question already is answered quite well by the American Society for Indexing.

I'm interested in becoming an indexer;  how do I persue this?
That question also is answered by the American Society for Indexing.