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DIY Book Scanner

diybookscanner.org

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Re: DIY Book Scanner

#121

Post by ghaff »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #117
SolonIslandus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this? https://1dollarscan.com/sp/

$.01 per page and they are based in Fremont, CA. This looks like a cheaper way to get most ebooks and you can ship the books direct from Amazon. If enough people did this, maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational.

>maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational.

Why don't you think it's rational? Note that the cost to print and distribute a printed book is only about $2 of its cost. Or don't you think authors, editors, etc. should be able to earn money?

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#122

Post by wintermutestwin »

ghaff wrote: post #121
wintermutestwin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$.01 per page and they are based in Fremont, CA. This looks like a cheaper way to get most ebooks and you can ship the books direct from Amazon. If enough people did this, maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational.

>maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational. Why don't you think it's rational? Note that the cost to print and distribute a printed book is only about $2 of its cost. Or don't you think authors, editors, etc. should be able to earn money?

I frequently see Kindle pricing as higher than print. If ebook prices were 2$ less, I'd be more inclined to buy some. If they were 50% less, I'd buy 10x more. If the author got a higher cut, I'd also be more inclined to give these middlemen my money. As it is, I buy used print books most of the time...

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#123

Post by SamBam »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #120
zwayhowder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for personal use as all the books were still in copyright and I own the paper versions, it was a (probably legal) fair use of them purely for reference while studying. I often needed to find information in the books and couldn't reasonably carry them all with me every day between work and uni.

In my opinion, buying a book (or other media) should give one right to a digital copy from any source.

I'm a heavy believer in more rights when you buy a digital asset, but I don't think it's reasonable that buying something in one medium should give you automatic freebies in another medium. That other medium still needs to be produced, at a cost to the publisher. Does buying the book give you the rights to the audiobook as well?

That said, there should certainly be no restrictions to creating your own versions of things you own in other media.

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#124

Post by ghaff »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #122
ghaff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>maybe ebook pricing will come down to something rational. Why don't you think it's rational? Note that the cost to print and distribute a printed book is only about $2 of its cost. Or don't you think authors, editors, etc. should be able to earn money?

I frequently see Kindle pricing as higher than print. If ebook prices were 2$ less, I'd be more inclined to buy some. If they were 50% less, I'd buy 10x more. If the author got a higher cut, I'd also be more inclined to give these middlemen my money. As it is, I buy used print books most of the time...

Book pricing can be weird at times but Kindle is usually cheaper than new print. But, yes, more than used. Though I'll often buy Kindle for fiction anyway because I don't really want physical books. (And, to be honest, I read a lot fewer books than I used to in any case. I'm definitely time/attention limited rather than money. Ebooks could be free and I wouldn't read a lot more.)

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#125

Post by aliswe »

pflanze wrote: post #110
timonoko wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Saving precious bits like it is 1969". This would make an excellent song title.

Sorry but I find your answer disappointing and crossing over into offending. I spent some time first trying to understand how your code makes sense, then to write up a better solution and posted it, and you don't seem to be thankful at all and are instead dissing my effort. Sure, if it works for you, fine, I was under the impression that you didn't know better. You could have saved me time by indicating that you know…

dont take offense, i am certain that if you would call eachother up you both would get along terrifically. text is a horrible communication medium!

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#126

Post by pflanze »

aliswe wrote: post #125
pflanze wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I find your answer disappointing and crossing over into offending. I spent some time first trying to understand how your code makes sense, then to write up a better solution and posted it, and you don't seem to be thankful at all and are instead dissing my effort. Sure, if it works for you, fine, I was under the impression that you didn't know better. You could have saved me time by indicating that you know…

dont take offense, i am certain that if you would call eachother up you both would get along terrifically. text is a horrible communication medium!

Thanks. Yes, sometimes communication falls short and down, and one's own state of mind is time dependent and doesn't see everything involved. I was in an eager "would like to see positive feedback" state of mind just as timonoko may have been when originally posting their solution, and then interpreted the rejection in an overly negative light. My apologies to them and for the noise.

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#127

Post by tablespoon »

subset wrote: post #101
subpar wrote: post #30

My first job out of college was scanning books for the Internet Archive down in the basement of the Library of Congress. Their scanning machines used a foot pedal to raise and lower the glass Platen, so I'd use one hand to flip the page and wiggle the cradle to get things nice and flat and the other would snap the photo. You can get pretty fast after a while, but boy is it mindless. Older books that had been rebound…

I currently work for the University I study at in the (biomedical) library. I scan lots of old journal articles and periodicals for academics who need it for their research. A typical job might be scanning an article from 1960 on Potato Research for an agriculturalist, or a graph of human energy expenditure, or an analysis of fibres for forensic medicine. We get researchers from all around the world requesting articl…

> And if you mis-scan a page accidentally (some of the book margins are super tight), then you have to restart the entire scan - there's no delete page button!

Sounds like you need a license for Adobe Acrobat Pro or some other application that will let you reshuffle/insert pages.

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#128

Post by ajford »

SamBam wrote: post #123
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, buying a book (or other media) should give one right to a digital copy from any source.

I'm a heavy believer in more rights when you buy a digital asset, but I don't think it's reasonable that buying something in one medium should give you automatic freebies in another medium. That other medium still needs to be produced, at a cost to the publisher. Does buying the book give you the rights to the audiobook as well? That said, there should certainly be no restrictions to creating your own versions of thi…

Print houses are increasingly using the same source and layout files for printed books as they are for ebooks. This means that there is little to no difference or extra cost to produce the alternate media version here.

I totally agree that an audio book has an entirely different production path and it's own entirely different staff and company that needs to make it's own costs back. But that argument is becoming less and less relevant for physical vs digital books.

Many non-traditional/smaller publishers and printers, such as No Starch Press, offer free copies of the ebook version when you purchase the physical copy and offer the digital copy at a reduce price compared to print.

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#129

Post by pbhjpbhj »

SamBam wrote: post #123
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, buying a book (or other media) should give one right to a digital copy from any source.

I'm a heavy believer in more rights when you buy a digital asset, but I don't think it's reasonable that buying something in one medium should give you automatic freebies in another medium. That other medium still needs to be produced, at a cost to the publisher. Does buying the book give you the rights to the audiobook as well? That said, there should certainly be no restrictions to creating your own versions of thi…

I've not explained well, I don't expect the producer to have an obligation to create a copy, just to exhaust their right to sue you for having a copy. But, if the same work _is_ available in another format then I think it would be reasonable to expect the seller to provide it (it costs them bandwidth, nothing else over what they're already spending).

Audiobooks I'd say are new works. If you buy it on a medium you should be allowed to rip it and vice-versa, however (currently not allowed in UK).

Re: DIY Book Scanner

#130

Post by [deleted] »

david_allison wrote: post #33
fernly wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

archiving what? just curious.

I want to digitize the entire linguistic and spoken corpus of a critically endangered language[0] and convert it to a searchable format to aid in language revival, academic research, and ensuring that an informed debate can occur when the modern usages of the language differ from traditional usages of the language. Most of the printed books are scattered, but available, but it's akin to an iceberg: there's a signific…

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