Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
I suspect the "morality" involved with self-scanning is not morality, but throwing roadblocks in the path. To do a good scan/OCR/copyproof of a book takes 24-40 hours of labor. Most people won't go to that level of work, and if a few misguided people do, well, as long as they don't make that labor available for free (i.e. by uploading it), the moralists can live with it. They can't do too many books anyways....
|
24-40 HOURS??!
Not if the person has lots of experience with it.
Quick-and-dirty scan-OCR (with correction)-format: 1-4 hours, depending on book. That'll get a me a readable ebook version in Word-formatted PDF. It'll have some OCR errors, and the formatting won't be great, but it'll be fine for a novel I'm going to read once, or for first reading of a novel I want to format more carefully, but don't want to have the ending spoiled while I'm doing the formatting.
Extra-careful: ~6-10 hours (higher end only for image-heavy books where OCR zoning is critical) lets me fix the OCR errors, and format with line breaks between paragraphs & chapters tagged as H2 for Calibre conversion.
However, for that I'm assuming a high-speed scanner, good OCR software (Finereader Pro), and enough practice to make all the steps go smoothly.
Another dozen hours would let me produce nifty customized BookDesigner ebooks in several formats.