MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Tricky Question of the Day: I want a book... where should I buy it?

mocelet · 09-11-2007, 04:10 PM

The problem with the music industry comparison though, is that with music you can buy a CD (which has no DRM of any description, despite Sony's best efforts) and easily convert it to MP3s (or Ogg Vorbis, or AAC, or FLAC, or ALAC, or WMA or...) on your own computer with no hassle in 5-20 minutes (depending on how anal you are about rip quality, tagging and compression details). I personally do this and keep all my Ogg Vorbis files to myself and don't share them with anyone but my wife. The CDs stay in the cupboard away from scratchy CD players.

There is no similar route for converting a p-book into an e-book. I have never tried to scan and OCR a book, but I expect that 0.5 to 1 page per minute is the fastest you will ever go unless you cut the spine off and have a sheet feeder on your scanner. So a regular paperback is going to take 4-8 hours to convert. I can read some books in less time than that!

Consequently we are reliant on publishers or pirates to provide e-books that we can use, and until DRM free, universal format e-books are available, pirate books in HTML look like a very good proposition. And if you buy the p-book version as well, many people believe that this is like buying a CD and ripping it to MP3. Of course it isn't, but there is no better route.

09-11-2007, 04:10 PM	#30
mocelet Connoisseur Posts: 56 Karma: 11 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: iLiad / Palm Vx / Nokia E65	The problem with the music industry comparison though, is that with music you can buy a CD (which has no DRM of any description, despite Sony's best efforts) and easily convert it to MP3s (or Ogg Vorbis, or AAC, or FLAC, or ALAC, or WMA or...) on your own computer with no hassle in 5-20 minutes (depending on how anal you are about rip quality, tagging and compression details). I personally do this and keep all my Ogg Vorbis files to myself and don't share them with anyone but my wife. The CDs stay in the cupboard away from scratchy CD players. There is no similar route for converting a p-book into an e-book. I have never tried to scan and OCR a book, but I expect that 0.5 to 1 page per minute is the fastest you will ever go unless you cut the spine off and have a sheet feeder on your scanner. So a regular paperback is going to take 4-8 hours to convert. I can read some books in less time than that! Consequently we are reliant on publishers or pirates to provide e-books that we can use, and until DRM free, universal format e-books are available, pirate books in HTML look like a very good proposition. And if you buy the p-book version as well, many people believe that this is like buying a CD and ripping it to MP3. Of course it isn't, but there is no better route.