Quote:
Originally Posted by AnemicOak
Got some numbers? I've only done one from scratch book for myself and suspect I spent more attention to detail than many (in that I went page by page through the original after also doing a spelling and editing pass) and it took about 17 hours. So I'd be curious about the time it takes a professional conversion service with a set workflow, and likely better equipment, when compared to someone doing it their first time on the fly.
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It depends on the work being scanned (size, illustrations and quality of print), your toleration for error and how picky you are with regards to formatting. Do you expect just text, or all the special formatting from the original. Bare bones scanning that one might get from India, or via a pirate site is pretty quick.
Something that is a close approximation of the original printed book, with all the illustrations in the right place, etc. can take a lot longer. Some books use different fonts for different purposes (example, some authors like to use italics for things like telepathic communication verse normal speech). Many books will use a special font for the first letter of a chapter. Add in the correct spacing between paragraphs and chapters.
Plus, you have to consider what kind of shape the original is in. An old paperback that is 40 or 50 years old? Add in the issue with SF&F of having a lot of words that don't appear in a normal dictionary. I think you can see how the various complications can add up.
Heck, even a simple conversion from az3 to epub in Calibre can lose a lot of formatting in some ebooks that I have.