Free PDFs Are they safe?

[BrickyBrian]

Thank you very much pdurrant,
I will try, "Amazon, Gutenberg, Smashwords, Google books or Internet Archive* again.
Thank you also for reminding me that if its not there than its almost certainly in-copyright almost certainly a pirate copy and therefore possibly dangerous to download.
Scanning may well be my best bet. I note that the process is usually "destructive (they cut off the spine)." However, "Churchill The End of Glory. Charmely originally sold at £30.00 can now be purchased for £0.87 plus postage.

I find using a hard copy so much easier when looking for precise information.

[sufue]

Back in the days when a lot of my favorite authors/titles weren't available as e-books, I used a service called bookscan.us and was very happy with their work. They offered several choices for the service: just a basic PDF scan, a cropped PDF scan to be bigger on an e-reader, a PDF scan with OCR, etc. I mostly used the cropped PDF scans, and was pleased with the results.

They were sometimes a little slow, but I tended to send them a big box full of used books at a time, so I understood if they didn't do it all at once.

I haven't used them for a while, since there are only a few authors/titles I want that are not in e-book now, and I already have PDF scans of almost all of them. But I don't know why their service would have changed much.

They do destroy the book in the process...

There are also a couple of other services that do the same thing that are probably pretty good too, I just haven't used them.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

If it's not at Amazon, Gutenberg, Smashwords, Google books or Internet Archive*, then it's almost certainly in-copyright and not yet available as any kind of ebook. So if you do manage to find it on some random internet site, it's almost certainly a pirate copy.

In which case, a paper copy and scanning is your best bet. There are lots of companies that will (for a smallish fee) scan a book for you, although the process is usually destructive (they cut off the spine).

*Internet Archive, unfortunately, often also has unauthorised copies.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by sufue

Back in the days when a lot of my favorite authors/titles weren't available as e-books, I used a service called bookscan.us and was very happy with their work. They offered several choices for the service: just a basic PDF scan, a cropped PDF scan to be bigger on an e-reader, a PDF scan with OCR, etc. I mostly used the cropped PDF scans, and was pleased with the results.

They were sometimes a little slow, but I tended to send them a big box full of used books at a time, so I understood if they didn't do it all at once.

I haven't used them for a while, since there are only a few authors/titles I want that are not in e-book now, and I already have PDF scans of almost all of them. But I don't know why their service would have changed much.

They do destroy the book in the process...

There are also a couple of other services that do the same thing that are probably pretty good too, I just haven't used them.

My somewhat educated guess is that there are still such services out there, although yours is the first mention of one that I remember seeing in a long while.

There is a "Fair Use" provision in the U.S. law(s) which allows a person to photocopy bits and pieces of a copyrighted item; perhaps that it is what pdurrant referred to when he spoke of photocopying "bits that you want to quote." I'm sure that they have some similar fair-use provisions in the law(s) of the U.K. as they do in the U.S.

Someone mentioned the scanning service tearing off the spine; another person mentioned that some destroy the (paper-based) book. I'm sure that both are intended to accomplish the same purpose--to make the original either unusable or unavailable anymore. It makes sense--an author and publisher will not lose possible royalties or profits (or very much, anyway) from that process. There is basically just an exchange of one book (paper-based) for another one (digitally-based). Nothing lost; nothing gained. It's basically just an exchange of one for the other.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by BrickyBrian

I feel that in spite of all the useful advice and information I have received from this forum I'm still hunting in the dark.
Does anyone know of a forum or service that offers the service of looking for PDFs or E Books with a specific title? Failing that could you please continue posting details of likely Internet pages covering serious historical publications. Many thanks all.

I tried pdfsearchengine.net (notice the ".net"), which I used with great profit in the past, for you--no results there.

If you Google "pdfsearchengine," there will be a plethora of results.

I'm afraid that if you can't find one on the Internet, you may have to resort to some extreme measures--like writing the author and pleading for a copy (however, my experience has been that authors do not necessarily keep very many copies of their own books around, for very long at least; however, with the book being self-published, it might be a different matter altogether). Fortunately, in a search for people, that I did a few moments ago, there is only one "Gavin Fallows" in the entire U.K.

[Little.Egret]

Perhaps

http://1dollarscan.com/faq.php

I also see

https://www.pdfdocument.com/

HTH

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by BrickyBrian

could you please continue posting details of likely Internet pages covering serious historical publications. Many thanks all.

I just noticed this statement that you made, when I saw it in a quote that someone pulled from one of your messages.

I'll try to compile a list of sellers, over the next few weeks. Pen & Sword, there in the U.K., often has some fantastic deals. I noticed that they had a big sale, a week or two ago, where everything in the sale was 99p.

I haven't posted many ebooks on military, WWII, leaders during war (ex: Churchill), etc. much because they seem to go over with MobileReaders like a lead balloon (sports stuff is another example).

Re-reading your statement, I'm not sure that I understand what you would like to have. I don't think that we would be allowed to post general military, etc.-oriented webpages, since this is a forum dedicated to ebooks and related things. Lists of the websites of publishers of ebooks does fall within the purview of the List, as I understand it. However if you scan the list of forums, you might find a place in the "Miscellaneous" category for queries about other things. The "Lounge" is probably the forum that would fit the best. Mods?