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Old 09-21-2013, 07:39 AM   #1
Seraphine
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How presentable are scanned books?

Hi all,

James Clavell's Shogun has been on my to-be-read list for aeons, but moving from some of my heftier tomes (such as King's IT [1,376p]; Martin's A Dance With Dragons [1,017p]; Stephenson's Reamde [1,044p]) to ebooks has made me languish the size of Shogun - I wouldn't have blinked at carting around such a book in the past, and though I still do read plenty of hardcovers, I'm not inclined to read a paper copy of Shogun.

However, it doesn't seem to be available as an ebook - at least, not in my particular (heavily) geo-restricted area. I've been considering buying a cheap secondhand copy and sending it to 1DollarScan, or a similar service, to have it scanned and destroyed. I don't know the legalities around purchasing a paper edition and then pirating an electronic edition, so I don't even want to go there, but I'd be fine with having my own copy scanned and destroyed.

The thing I'm concerned about is the quality. OCR ebooks, as I'm sure you well know, can be quite hit and miss. I'll be reading the scanned book on a tablet, so the format being PDF isn't an issue and I won't need to (shabbily) convert it - but what's the quality of the PDF to begin with? Is it really as lovely as 1DollarScan leads me to believe? Has anybody here had any experiences, positive or negative, with 1DollarScan? I've used the search function, but topics are quite old or not exactly what I'm looking for.

Thank you.
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Old 09-21-2013, 07:47 AM   #2
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You'll probably get a better result from just circumventing the georestrictions - it's not difficult with Amazon.
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Old 09-21-2013, 07:49 AM   #3
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You'll probably get a better result from just circumventing the georestrictions - it's not difficult with Amazon.
Is it legal?
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Old 09-21-2013, 08:07 AM   #4
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I don't know where you are. My government encourages it. It's against TOS, but that doesn't make it criminal or anything - the company may just cancel that account if they decide to get stroppy about it.

My take: buy secondhand copy and scan, creator gets nothing. Circumvent georestrictions and buy: creator, publisher, and distributor all get paid.
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Old 09-21-2013, 08:16 AM   #5
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I don't know where you are. My government encourages it. It's against TOS, but that doesn't make it criminal or anything - the company may just cancel that account if they decide to get stroppy about it.

My take: buy secondhand copy and scan, creator gets nothing. Circumvent georestrictions and buy: creator, publisher, and distributor all get paid.
I'm also in Australia - does our government really encourage circumventing geo-restrictions? Where did you learn this? I haven't heard about it before.
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Old 09-21-2013, 08:24 AM   #6
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Old 09-21-2013, 08:49 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Seraphine View Post
Is it legal?
I see there are 2 copies available for check-out at open library in epub format.

http://openlibrary.org/search?q=shogun

So I'm curious if open library is something you can access in Australia.

From a philosophical POV, I would never let georestrictions prevent me from reading what I want. But that's me.
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Old 09-21-2013, 09:07 AM   #8
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Originally Posted by Rob Lister View Post
I see there are 2 copies available for check-out at open library in epub format.

http://openlibrary.org/search?q=shogun

So I'm curious if open library is something you can access in Australia.

From a philosophical POV, I would never let georestrictions prevent me from reading what I want. But that's me.
Our public libraries are (mostly, at least) hooked into Overdrive. And yep, Shogun is available to borrow from the WA system at the moment.
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Old 09-21-2013, 09:37 AM   #9
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Use an American address (hotel, for example), for Amazon and Kobo to buy in the US or UK.

The Kobo 50% coupon (Sept50) works in the US. While you're at it, get Musashi by Yoshikawa too. I got that yesterday (and Taiko too), pushing them forward on my to reread list because of the size of the hardcovers.

Last edited by Katsunami; 09-21-2013 at 01:15 PM.
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Old 09-21-2013, 12:27 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by Katsunami View Post
get Musashi by Yoshikawa too. I got that yesterday (and Taiko too), pushing them forward on my to reread list because of the size of the hardcovers.
Yep, these are great
Read Shogun when I was about 12, and reread a few years later and still wasn't particularly impressed. Yoshikawa is in a different league altogether IMHO.
And Yasushi Inoue's The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan is also on Kindle now, it's a shame more of his books aren't on Kindle.

Slightly OT (apologies to OP) but does Yodo-Dono nikki by Inoue even exist in English translation? I read it in French (le chateau de Yodo) and have been trying to find it in English for a friend but have so far failed.

Last edited by Yolina; 09-21-2013 at 12:48 PM.
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Old 09-21-2013, 12:51 PM   #11
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Yep, these are great
I know. I've read them a decade ago, and want to reread them, but after reading on a Kindle for 1,5 years now, I loathe to hold a hardcover again. I re-read Shogun a short while ago, and halfway I switched to my hardcover to see if I still like it.

Font too small...
Book too big...
No reading with one hand and eating potato chips with the other

I've been pushing Musashi down my TBRR pile (To Be ReRead) because of this, but AnemicOak in another thread told me: "There's an ebook out now". And it was... Amazon and Kobo where hiding it from me in the search because I'm not in America. So, I've put in an American address, and was promptly able to see the books. Kobo's code Sept50 works, and I got both Musashi and Taiko at the price of €7.99 (seems to be around €6; the hardcovers cost e €30...). Pity that The Heiké Story was not available (in English) as an eBook too.

Quote:
Read Shogun when I was about 12, and reread a few years later and still wasn't particularly impressed. Yoshikawa is in a different league altogether IMHO.
It depends what sort of novel you want to read. Shogun is a good read, with good character development, and the mini-series (NOT the cut-back movie version) is one of my all-time favorites. I think I'm still in love with Mariko

Quote:
And Yasushi Inoue's The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan is also on Kindle now, it's a shame more of his books aren't on Kindle.
I have to check that out then. Maybe look at Kobo too. Sometimes one has books the other doesn't.

Yoshikawa wrote 53 books, but AFAIK, only 3 (Musashi, Taiko and The Heiké Story, considered to be his best three by many) are available in English.

Last edited by Katsunami; 09-21-2013 at 01:14 PM.
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Old 09-21-2013, 01:13 PM   #12
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Yoshikawa wrote 53 books, but AFAIK, only 3 (Musashi, Taiko and The Heiké Story, considered to be his best three by many) are available in English.
Don't have any by Yoshikawa other than these 3, but as far as Inoue goes, I have in English paperbacks: the samurai banner, Counterfeiter & Other Stories, the hunting gun, Lou-Lan & Other Stories, Tun-Huang
Bullfight came out on Kindle not long ago.
And in French I have le chateau de Yodo, la tuile de Tenpyo, Shirobamba and le loup bleu

Edit: actually, a few more of Inoue's books are now on Kindle, at least on Amazon UK

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Old 09-21-2013, 01:49 PM   #13
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Books I've bought that had been scanned were not very readable. Too many errors and too much confusion.

As for legality, in the U.S., it's hard to go a day without committing a crime so I've quit worrying about it.
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Old 09-21-2013, 04:13 PM   #14
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To give an answer to the original question; I've sent a number of my old books (mostly pb's) to Book Scan US (haven't tried 1DollarScan but the price is basically the same). The pdf's are the same quality as the original books - in a few cases of old, slightly faded print, the pdf is better.
They read easily on my tablet. As I have ABBYY Fine Reader software, I didn't bother to pay extra for OCR, but haven't needed to use it for any of them. YMMV.
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Old 09-21-2013, 04:30 PM   #15
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But if it's a PDF created from images, your books are huge, and not searchable. Both are a big fat disadvantage for an e-reader.

And if you're going to read Shogun on a 10 inch tablet, you could just as well read the hardcover, at least in my opinion.
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