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I think they scan new books, once they have one scan in inventory, they don't have to scan it again. When you send them your book, it's proof you owned one and they send you a PDF. That is, they don't scan all individual books --so if yours had margin notes, that would be lost, I believe.
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If they get the same book to scan twice, why actually do the second scan? Why not just use the scan from the first copy of the book? And if that is the case, now they have a fresh copy of the book with its spine intact. It would be a waste of the resources invested in the production of that physical book to not find some productive use for that copy.
Some people write notes on the margins of the page and underline key-phrases when reading. I don't think they would check each book to see if it was "clean".
My grandmother, who passed away last week, was an author. She self-published two novels through a printer who typeset her books and printed a few hundred copies. I don't know what happened to the original text files she gave her printer and I know she never got a digital typeset copy. I've been wanting to re-release her novels as ebooks, but haven't had a way to digitize them. This is perfect for me.
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.
Of course it's necessary because not all publishers release digital versions or they release it with a ton of DRM, etc..
Still, it's a bit sad.
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…
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Not resold as physical books, no...since they cut the spine off the book so that they can scan it. Resold as PDF files? Not by this company, anyway...I don't think that business model will work out legally. Resold by shady third parties? Maybe. Copied and bittorrented? Definitely.
> Resold as PDF files? Not by this company, anyway...I don't think that business model will work out legally. I wonder. If the company holds onto the PDF and just sends out that PDF whenever someone mails in a book already scanned, isn't this the equivalent of those music services which simply make you prove through uploading music that you already have a copy and then give you access to their one stored version of t…
My grandmother, who passed away last week, was an author. She self-published two novels through a printer who typeset her books and printed a few hundred copies. I don't know what happened to the original text files she gave her printer and I know she never got a digital typeset copy. I've been wanting to re-release her novels as ebooks, but haven't had a way to digitize them. This is perfect for me.
This is a cool idea but it is a bit sad that it is necessary. Sad because it is wasteful. Books are written in a digital format. So we are using natural resources to make them, turning them into digital (which they already were, and probably in a better format then PDF like LaTeX, specially for technical books), and then destroying the physical copies after they consumed resources. Of course it's necessary because no…
My grandmother, who passed away last week, was an author. She self-published two novels through a printer who typeset her books and printed a few hundred copies. I don't know what happened to the original text files she gave her printer and I know she never got a digital typeset copy. I've been wanting to re-release her novels as ebooks, but haven't had a way to digitize them. This is perfect for me.