what I found out (searching for books I already own in paper) was that i was able to get epubized copies made of said books in qualities from acceptable (text clean, only some images, like maps, commonly found in fantasy books could need rejustification) up to superb. what spares me a lot of scanning
A point worth to think about is that i am referring to books of which in most cases (5 out of 6 series) no official epubs exist (yet)
the series in question are german translations of english with 1 exception where the whole series is in Polish (originally) and PDF.
in one of this cases I can even report the following:
- as for now the original english series consists of n volumes
- n-1 volumes have been translated to german so far.
- the n-1th volume is available as an official epub, the previous volumes are not.
- the darkned gave me access to handmade epubs (in german) from volume 1 to n-2, what means the officially available one seems NOT to have been pirated (so far).
in another case, where I know the whole series exist as official epubs the darknet copies are (due to covers used and the look of graphics used inside look rather like good scans than original sources)
made of the paper editions.
The conclusions are:
- the 1st goal of the inspected places is to close the gap and create epubs where publishers still meditate over their bellies.
- People actually DO vote with their wallets and purchase paper instead of DRMed files and make their own not infested digital copies
for me it proves that it's availability in general as well as DRM what matters.
therefor, the longer publishers hesitate offering (preferably DRM-less) epubs the more people will help themselves.
there seems to be a lot of people like
me out there thinking:
"If they 'd be willing to sell me clean digital copies I 'd happily sell my pbooks and reinvest the money in such ones.
Since they don't I keep the paper for legal reasons and help myself to a digital copy that I don't need to illegally uncripple"