Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email • Hacker News Board

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#11

Post by michaelbuckbee » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:09 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #8

I was all there, until it said 'PDF'. For my purposes I need a more accessible format. Other than that, I could definitely see this helping with my foreign language studies. Especially Japanese, as the company appears to do a lot of books in that language.

It appears that the service returns plain PDF files which are fairly easy to convert into more open formats.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#12

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:10 PM UTC

iqster wrote: post #7

The video indicated that the binding for the book was being cut off. I suspect that will prevent students from borrowing books from the library, getting them scanned via this service, and returning them. It is sad that many hundreds of thousands of hours have been wasted by students photocopying books :(

> I suspect that will prevent students from borrowing books from the library, getting them scanned via this service, and returning them.

Now I'm curious, how much does a library charge for a lost book?

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#13

Post by klinquist » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:11 PM UTC

Do they OCR before converting to PDF? Having a PDF that is just a 'picture' isn't very helpful (can't search for text, change text size, etc).

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#14

Post by jasongullickson » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

signa11 wrote: post #3

Would something similar make sense for say music cd's, dvd's etc? I for one would love to send someone my media collection, and have it ripped into lossless format and put on cloud. In order to get around piracy issues etc maybe the entire collection can be digitally signed by my public key...

Check out https://www.murfie.com/

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#15

Post by dman » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

iqster wrote: post #7

The video indicated that the binding for the book was being cut off. I suspect that will prevent students from borrowing books from the library, getting them scanned via this service, and returning them. It is sad that many hundreds of thousands of hours have been wasted by students photocopying books :(

> I suspect that will prevent students from borrowing books from the library, getting them scanned via this service, and returning them. Now I'm curious, how much does a library charge for a lost book?

Dont go down that road - please. If you "borrow" someones book you rob one person of the privilege of reading it in the future. If you pull the same stunt with a library book you potentially rob many people well into the future. For some reason libraries are very slow to replace lost books. I guess just knowing with good certainty that the book is actually gone for good rather than placed in the wrong section would be a tough nut to crack.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#16

Post by kwamenum86 » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

They're not scanning your books for a dollar. They're letting you pay them to give them books. Then they resell them at some discount. Speculation...but that's what I would do.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#17

Post by markprice » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:22 PM UTC

klinquist wrote: post #13

Do they OCR before converting to PDF? Having a PDF that is just a 'picture' isn't very helpful (can't search for text, change text size, etc).

yes, the pricing page on their site says OCR is included free.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#18

Post by mp3jeep01 » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:23 PM UTC

The way the current rules are written for fair-use, if two people send in an identical book, are they allowed to send the same PDF to both rather than scanning twice? I wonder how the governing bodies would view that. Side-note, I think it'd be interesting if if they collected/published data about what books are sent in, and from where.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#19

Post by Bud » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

What I noticed about this company, after checking their website:

1) They list an "Accept direct shipment from Amazon" option (coming soon). Think about it: this means a book could be printed, sold, shipped to this company, scanned and destroyed without ever being read. Something is very odd here.

2) The business is located four blocks from my apartment. Maybe I'll try them out...

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#20

Post by kellishaver » Thu, Aug 18, 2011, 6:44 PM UTC

squirrel wrote: post #2

Article doesn't mention a big audience that would be very interested in cheap book scanning: the print disabled. Blind and partially-sighted people are the most obvious members of this group but dyslexics and others who cannot read normal print would also benefit. Many books are of course already available through libraries for the blind but if you need less-popular or specialised texts you are out of luck. With an a…

I came here to say the same thing. I can't read printed books at all. Even large print ones are a struggle. I just have to have the back light of my iPad or computer screen to see what I'm reading, in addition to the increased font size. I have a lot of books that I love that aren't available in digital format, mostly due to their age. I think I may well be taking advantage of this service.