iPod Plese HELP! Trying To Scan A Book!

[NVash]

Okay, I should start off by stating my problem. Im new here and very uneducated about scanners and everything else. My area of expertise is video games so Im a fish out of water. But nonetheless I do alot of reading on my iTouch and Droid. I have a few older books that Id like to scan and have tried to but had no luck. I use a Macbook Pro and have an HP Scanner / Printer. Not quiet sure on the make and model but its about two or three years old. On my Macbook the apps I can open are HP Photosmart 3100 Series, HP Photosmart Studio and HP Device Manager. Usually I try to scan through Photosmart Studio. I dont know if that matters or not. But Ive said it many times, using an HP scanner on a Macbook could be my first problem.

See, the Droid uses this program called Aldiko. Aldiko only uses EPUB. I use Calibre to convert PDF to EPUB. Stanza for the iTouch does LIT or EPUB. I prefer to have the same book on both devices because I dont always carry my iTouch but I always carry my cell phone. Just remember what chapter Im on and continue, thats the way Id prefer to do it.

Frankly, if at all possible, Id prefer to scan it in LIT format. I dont know if that is possible, thats Microsoft and I use a Macbook Pro. When I scan though I try to do it in PDF since then I can immediately put it through Calibre, convert it and put it on both devices. Never works. I have three problems.
1) The pages come out ridiculously huge, slightly yellow and a very large file size. I may end up with a book thats a GB or so file when its only 200 pages.
2) As Im scanning Id also like to add JPEGs but have no idea how. I have a friend thats an author, she recently put out a book but doesnt know how to scan. Id like to make her an EBook version to sell and add all sorts of Bonus Content such as pics from the movie, musical and even of her new book if at all possible but I cant find the option to add pics to the file.
3) I actually tried to scan a full script once. The book I only got to page 03 before I quit. The script I made it to page 50, I got an Error message, the program shut down and none of it saved so I had to start all over again. That happened three times and then I quit. I think I had gone through HP Photosmart Studio then as well.

So my main question is this. How do I scan these books? What format should I scan them in so that they can be transferred to LIT and EPUB easily?

Can someone please help? I cant even begin to say how frustrating this is.

[wayrad]

I notice you didn't mention doing OCR (optical character recognition) on your PDF's. If you didn't, you have an image file, not text that can be converted using Calibre, which might explain the "never works" comment.

If your friend wrote her book in a word processing program, working from that file would be far less labor-intensive and more accurate than scanning and OCRing a print version.

[Patricia]

If your file is that big then you are, as Wayrad suggests, making a PDF file of images. You will need some OCR software to convert the PDF to searchable text. Then you will need to edit all the OCR errors that will creep in.

Check the software that came with your scanner. There may be a copy of ABBYY Sprint, or an early version of ABBYY Fineware, or maybe Omnipage.
(I invested in ABBYY Fineware 10, which does a good job but is quite expensive.)

Here's an old thread that may just help:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9780

You may want to re-post your question in the Workshop forum, where you will get more up-to-date advice on scanning and OCR issues.

[NVash]

Yes, I did make a PDF file of images. I have no idea where my printer software even is since I recently moved and this OCR thing is new to me but Ill copy paste this over in Workshop. Thanks for that link as well, Im reading it now. Thanks for the help everyone.