BookScan's offshoot, 1DollarScan.com, scans books and docs to PDF for a dollar per 100 pages.That's the cost for scanning books and personal docs shipped to 1DollarScan in San Jose, California. You pay the shipping costs, and if you want the
UPDATE1 - The "Terms," which they don't make clear on their main pages(except to mention no return-processing fee on books), say:
"BOOKS WILL NOT BE RETURNED ONCE SCANNED REGARDLESS OF REQUEST TO RETURN."
"There's a $5 return-processing fee on non-books as well as the return-shipping charges the customer pays (the latter half of that sentence is a given).
By default, the documents are not returned to you unless you specify you want them back and pay the cost for return-shipment (and the $5 processing fee mentioned just above).
This will not be ideal for books that are highly valued by us since they will not be returned at all nor great for valuable original documents, since an administrative error could mean that someone did not see or remember that we wanted the documents back.
See the other conditions under "Terms" at the bottom of this blog article. They're important, as the material may not be accepted unless you know what they won't accept.
Additional options are 10 pages of a business document, 10 business cards, etc., for a $1. Snail-mail in the paper text and 1DollarScan will email you back a PDF. I do have some books I've bought while traveling that I'd like in digital format. On the other hand, in each case I want to keep the original book, so that won't work out, in my case.
Single column PDFs are easily convertable to Amazon-format books, moreover, by sending a copy of a PDF to [you]@free.kindle.com and putting "Convert" in the Subject field -- Amazon servers then autoconvert the PDF and send the converted copy to your Kindle (UK: K3), which gives you access to all the Kindle book features, including font-size enlargement, text-to-speech, Kindle-type search (more flexible, faster), dictionary, etc.
Note that for PDF documents, Kindle 3's have an option to increase or decrease the contrast of text-to-background (PDFs are often done for material originally in color, but some colors used for text will be barely gray against a gray background on a 16-level b&w e-Ink screen).
After a conversion to e-Ink book format, the results will have normal b&w contrast.
If you prefer to convert a PDF to Kindle format (MOBI/.prc) yourself, rather than sending the document to Amazon servers to autoconvert it for you, then you can use the free Mobipocket Creator program to do that. Mobipocket is owned by Amazon.
Obviously, pirates will no doubt be taking advantage of this new venture too. While 1DollarScan's website says, "1DollarScan respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same" and says that they won't hesitate to report a customer's personal information if requested by law enforcement agencies, they're also claiming that scans provided to customers are legal under fair use clauses, Saenz points out -- but we've seen that "fair use" normally refers to judiciously excerpted material, not the full work.
However, the idea is that the conversion is for your personal use only.
OCR capability is included in the price.
Singularity Hub's Aaron Saenz adds (emphases and bracketed words mine)...
' The speed and efficiency of 1DollarScan may make it the preferred service for archivists everywhere, especially considering that their PDF printouts come with an optical character recognition [OCR] (read: searchable) layer that make it ideal for organized collections in a business environment. '
That's key for me, on a personal level, since my main interest in e-text is that it's easily-searchable! That's the reason I stay away from digital magazines that are image-only (except Nat'l Geo, which is excellent on my NookColor and they provide viewing of text-only although it's not searchable).
BookScan, the parent company in Japan, has over 200 employees who do nothing but convert paper documents to digital ones, and the service is so popular, there's "an extensive waiting list."
There's a video by BookScan at the article, in Japanese, but it gives you an idea of the process. The larger version is at YouTube.
The original book will not be the same after this is done.
I've left out a lot, so go to Singularity Hub and Aaron Szenz's article to get the rest of it.
UPDATE2
See the TERMS page for more you need to know before sending anything -- such as:
1. some media (like glossy photo-print paper) might not scan successfully but those will then be returned to you -- there's no clarity, though, as to whether or not you pay the return-shipping fee on that type, but I suspect you'd need to.
2. if staples, sticky notes or any other removable objects ARE attached to the media, the "documents will not be accepted."
3. all sheets must be unfolded
4. they accept only regular-size business cards and books no more than 2.5 " in thickness
(I sent them a question about books with more than 700 pages.
Answer: The maximum cost is $6 per book, no matter how many sets of 100.)
5. they don't accept any magazines
6. all photos must be removed from photoalbums
7. some "large size photographs" may not be accepted
8. no greeting cards with "frills" or "pop-ups."
Processing time averages 2 weeks from the receipt of the original by 1DollarScan.
For daily free ebooks, check the following links:
| Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW: June July Aug 2011 Publication Date Late-listed Bestselling High-ratings UK: PubDate Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"? Battery Care Highly-rated under $1, | Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK): Top 100 free UK-Only: Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently): 99c Notepad 1.1, 99c Calculator, 99c Calendar, |
Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's) K3 Special ($114) K3-3G Special ($139) DX Graphite
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