Electronic versions of out-of-print paperbacks

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

This country has turned so much into a police state that a bit of anarchy might remind people that our constitution has been effectively voided.

Ah! Paranoid hallucinations! Just the specimen we've been looking for, for our psychological experimentation!

[JSWolf]

What we need is someone to stand up and say... let the rights of the people trump the rights of the corporation and do so after being made President.

[nguirado]

I looked for an electronic copy of World Without Men. Had to buy a used copy. I wonder why publishers don't do this. Scanning can't be that expensive.

[K-Thom]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

You are such a stitch! What fantasy world have you been living in?

I totally have to agree. Oh me, oh my. GA Russell, such a naive statement makes it hard for me to believe you actually were a lawyer. Honestly.

First and foremost rule: Heirs tend to develop an irriational attitude about the value of those "masterpieces" created, i.e. a lot of them are greedy beyond belief. Experienced it more than one time when asking for rights.

[GA Russell]

Thom, well, my experience with heirs has involved older downtown buildings used for commercial purposes. The heirs were much easier to deal with than real estate developers.

If you have experience with heirs of orphan works, please tell us all about it!

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by nguirado

I looked for an electronic copy of World Without Men. Had to buy a used copy. I wonder why publishers don't do this. Scanning can't be that expensive.

And neither the publisher nor the writer/heirs got any money from that sale.

Anarchy can be a good thing, sometimes.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

And neither the publisher nor the writer/heirs got any money from that sale.

Anarchy can be a good thing, sometimes.

And this was anarchy how?

[SolRaven]

Originally Posted by Gannett

I own hundreds of old paperbacks, mainly British mystery and science fiction from between the 50s to the 70s, and I would guess most are out of print. I wonder whether there would be any interest in converting some of these to electronic formats.

I have converted one book, and am beginning another conversion. I enjoy doing it, it's more time-consuming than difficult.

How do you go about doing that? Do you use a flatbed scanner? I have a friend who wrote a biography about his father in 1986 which is out of print. It would probably bring tears to his eyes to see that someone took the time to digitize his work.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

And this was anarchy how?

Anarchy in reference to my previous post of breaking the "rules" and putting books up on the P2P networks, not in reference to second-hand book sales. I was using the same word another poster used in an earlier post.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

Anarchy in reference to my previous post of breaking the "rules" and putting books up on the P2P networks, not in reference to second-hand book sales. I was using the same word another poster used in an earlier post.

Uh...Ok. Now Plan B has me worried.

[Gannett]

Originally Posted by SolRaven

How do you go about doing that? Do you use a flatbed scanner? I have a friend who wrote a biography about his father in 1986 which is out of print. It would probably bring tears to his eyes to see that someone took the time to digitize his work.

Yes, I scan the book using a flatbed scanner. Being old paperbakcs, and having fewer than 200 pages, they don't need any pressure to get a good clear scan. I then run the scans through Photoshop (using Actions) to crop and improve the contrast, save them as TIFFs.

Microsoft Office has an OCR feature, and I run the scans through that into a Word document. Then the real work begins, comparing the scanned pages to the text and making the necessary corrections.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Gannett

Yes, I scan the book using a flatbed scanner. Being old paperbakcs, and having fewer than 200 pages, they don't need any pressure to get a good clear scan. I then run the scans through Photoshop (using Actions) to crop and improve the contrast, save them as TIFFs.

Microsoft Office has an OCR feature, and I run the scans through that into a Word document. Then the real work begins, comparing the scanned pages to the text and making the necessary corrections.

If you are doing this a lot, you might want to try Abbyy FineReader. A copy of v7 should be very cheap if you can track one down.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

If you are doing this a lot, you might want to try Abbyy FineReader. A copy of v7 should be very cheap if you can track one down.

Depending on how many books you have to do, you might want to invest in a good guillotine paper cutter to cut off the spines, then use a good Automatic Document Feed (ADF) scanner to scan the pages. The Fujitsu ScanSnap is a good one for the job and it comes with Adobe Acrobat Standard 9 and Abbyy FineReader. The only caution is to never use a saw to cut the spines off (too much dust) and to never use compressed or canned air to clean paper dust from the scanner (use a vacuum).

I had considered the paper cutter pictured in your other post but wound up with this one. I tried this one before the current one and besides the fact there are a lot of knockoffs floating around (I got one that broke but I was able to get a full refund), the paper clamp is a very poor design. The one I'm currently using is much better.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Depending on how many books you have to do, you might want to invest in a good guillotine paper cutter to cut off the spines, then use a good Automatic Document Feed (ADF) scanner to scan the pages.

I've never been able to bring myself to cut the books up, pressing them flat is bad enough

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I've never been able to bring myself to cut the books up, pressing them flat is bad enough

I know what you mean. The first few times I felt like I was decapitating dear friends. The only reason I was able to do it was it was either that or give them up; I just don't have room for p-books now and will have even less in the not too distant future.