MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - New trend? digitize your books for $1USD each.

anamardoll · 09-21-2011, 09:20 AM

OK. Reporting back. Got the download link today -- it's only active for 30 days which seems reasonable, but important to note.

1. The PDF for my entire book is 133 MB. (356 pages, plus change.)

2. The text is searchable within the PDF but the search doesn't grab every instance of the word. (I.e., I can search for "nothing" and get several instances back, but not the one on the first page.) So the conversion process -- if that's what you're counting on -- seems a bit iffy.

3. The scans are really good. Most of the pages are oriented perfectly straight (no skew), and the scans are very bright and clear. There is some bleed through from the other side of the page.

Here are some images, courtesy of Quick PDF Tools:

Since I really just wanted a clean scan, I will definitely be using this company again. They were very professional and responded to my emails when I had questions.

If you're wanting this for a perfect text-layered PDF, though, it seems like the conversion process isn't 100%. (No surprise there.) However, having said THAT, my FineReader program seems to be able to convert the PDF into text VERY cleanly (I haven't seen any errors yet in my cursory glance-through). Whether that's because the scans are Just That Good or because of the behind-the-scenes text layering, I can't say. I *think* FineReader just treats the PDF as image, but I'm not sure.

I'm a happy camper.

09-21-2011, 09:20 AM	#64
anamardoll Chasing Butterflies Posts: 3,132 Karma: 5074169 Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: American Southwest Device: Uses batteries.	OK. Reporting back. Got the download link today -- it's only active for 30 days which seems reasonable, but important to note. 1. The PDF for my entire book is 133 MB. (356 pages, plus change.) 2. The text is searchable within the PDF but the search doesn't grab every instance of the word. (I.e., I can search for "nothing" and get several instances back, but not the one on the first page.) So the conversion process -- if that's what you're counting on -- seems a bit iffy. 3. The scans are really good. Most of the pages are oriented perfectly straight (no skew), and the scans are very bright and clear. There is some bleed through from the other side of the page. Here are some images, courtesy of Quick PDF Tools: Since I really just wanted a clean scan, I will definitely be using this company again. They were very professional and responded to my emails when I had questions. If you're wanting this for a perfect text-layered PDF, though, it seems like the conversion process isn't 100%. (No surprise there.) However, having said THAT, my FineReader program seems to be able to convert the PDF into text VERY cleanly (I haven't seen any errors yet in my cursory glance-through). Whether that's because the scans are Just That Good or because of the behind-the-scenes text layering, I can't say. I think FineReader just treats the PDF as image, but I'm not sure. I'm a happy camper. Last edited by anamardoll; 09-21-2011 at 09:42 AM.