Transferring to ebook

[jbcohen]

Does anyone have a cost effective method for transferring a printed book to an ebook format? Not a company but a method that I would use myself.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Start typing.

With a digital camera and some setup, you could photograph the pages just as many photograph slides and photographs, but there's more than likely going to be a lot of page curve distortion on the edges, or you'll have to damage the book to get it flat enough that OCR might be able to work with it to get to text. If you've got a scanner you can go that route, but I'd be worried about damage trying to get it flat enough that it can convert into text again. Most scanners will just scan to PDF, but I hate PDF so forget I said that.

Out of curiosity, what book? I'm assuming that it's unavailable as an e-book because unless the book was very short, the time and effort involved would not be worth the cost, even at Canadian/Australian agency prices.

[HarryT]

Unless your time is worth nothing to you, you'd be a lot better off using a company such as http://1dollarscan.com/

[DustyDisks]

[QUOTE=HarryT;2341391]Unless your time is worth nothing to you, you'd be a lot better off using a company such as http://1dollarscan.com/[/QUOTE]

The down side is that you lose your book, they cut it apart and scan and digitize it. Then the book is destroyed.

Not an option for most that love books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DustyDisks

The down side is that you lose your book, they cut it apart and scan and digitize it. Then the book is destroyed.

Not an option for most that love books.

Unless, though, it's a rare book, you'd almost unquestionably still be a winner, financially, by buying a cheap 2nd-hand copy of the book from Amazon and having it delivered to 1dollarscan to be scanned and destroyed.

[taustin]

If you can stomach the web design that looks like it escaped from the 90s, you might take a look at http://www.diybookscanner.org/

There's software (some of it free) that will compensate for the curve of scanning a book that isn't flat (which lets you avoid breaking the spine), and they'll have tips on how to assemble the hardware to go with it.

[DustyDisks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Unless, though, it's a rare book, you'd almost unquestionably still be a winner, financially, by buying a cheap 2nd-hand copy of the book from Amazon and having it delivered to 1dollarscan to be scanned and destroyed.

Good Point!
I was working more on the line of having both the paper and e-book in ones library. At least those of us that have the space for the paper ones.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

Start typing.

With a digital camera and some setup, you could photograph the pages just as many photograph slides and photographs, but there's more than likely going to be a lot of page curve distortion on the edges, or you'll have to damage the book to get it flat enough that OCR might be able to work with it to get to text.

Abby Finereader does a good job of sorting out the curves. I never open a book more than 90 degrees unless it's already falling to bits. But you do need a friend to press the camera button for you.

[VaultBoy]

Has anyone here used 1dollarscan?

I have a few books I've wanted to convert, but I'd like to hear some trusted users' reviews.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by VaultBoy

Has anyone here used 1dollarscan?

I have a few books I've wanted to convert, but I'd like to hear some trusted users' reviews.

Try this thread...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=146177

[Lynx-lynx]

To me it's curious that one can scan a paper book (their own copy, presumably) and turn it into an ebook and not breach copyright.

Why curious .... well with all the who har about copyright and ebooks I thought this also would have been outlawed.

So common sense prevails in some quarters of the ebook copyright discussion.

Of course, I'm presupposing this is the case irrespective of copyright status - that is in or out of copyright.

[Ripplinger]

If you have access to a scanner, and any cheap scanner will do, I have just a Canon pixma 3000, you can do it yourself. And I know for myself, I'm a lot pickier and have better results than if I farmed it out to someone else to do.

Plus there's the fun of learning to do it yourself.

[VaultBoy]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Try this thread...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=146177

Alright. Thanks!

[QuantumIguana]

I have some old PDF scans that I got from Google Books that I would live to OCR to text, they are just too hard to read as PDFs. I know there are websites where you can submit a PDF and get back text, but the OCR quality is very poor. Does anyone know any OCR websites that do a better job?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I have some old PDF scans that I got from Google Books that I would live to OCR to text, they are just too hard to read as PDFs. I know there are websites where you can submit a PDF and get back text, but the OCR quality is very poor. Does anyone know any OCR websites that do a better job?

I'd suggest buying a copy of Abbyy Finereader - it does a superb job of OCR on PDFs. You can buy older versions of it at a very reasonable price. You don't need the very latest release (unless you want spell checking in VERY obscure languages ).