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I'm doing the reverse... scanning or buying books or manuals into pdf form. I realized I accumulated way too many books. They take up a lot of space, I don't r

by pkaye 9y ago

I'm doing the reverse... scanning or buying books or manuals into pdf form. I realized I accumulated way too many books. They take up a lot of space, I don't read many of the often but would hate to lose the information. Thus I've slowly converted over the years. Also many pdf format books are cheaper than paper copy these days. I still keep the important books as paper copy but a bulk of the rest now fits is a harddrive available on my home network.

bronco21016 9y ago
Interested to hear your process for this. I remember a DIY book scanner some years ago but OCR etc have progressed a lot in the 5 years or so since I last read about that. Do you have some kind of dedicated scanner? Just photos? What do you use for processing. I’d love to do this for the bookshelf of reference books that I still occasionally reach out to but are taking up a ton of space.
- pkaye 9y ago
  For things like manuals, data books and those that are no longer sold I just search Google or archive.org for pdf copies. For other commercial books, the easiest thing is something like 1DollarScan.com which will tear open the book bindings and scan for you. Other approaches that worked in the past include 1) knew a family member who worked in a copy store where I could play with a fast scanner. 2) Some publishers like Oreilly's in the past let you get pdf copies for free or nominal price if you provide proof that you bought a paper copy. 3) I have scanner at home for small books or documents but it is usually too much manual work. But largely over the past 5+ years, I only buy DRM free pdf books. Many of the technical book publishers have sales throughout the year on their website where you can buy books at steep discount. I'm just a pdf book packrat :)
bringtheaction 9y ago
A lot of books can be found as PDF or ePub on pirate sites. If you already paid for the physical book there is zero moral issue in pirating a digital version of the book rather than spending your time manually scanning it and having to deal with OCR problems etc. So yeah I recommend you always look for a pirate version first before you decide to scan. You will come across a lot of spam, but if you know what to look for it's pretty easy to quickly distinguish fake sites from the legit ones. If you don't know what to look for you will discover that soon enough after you've run across enough fake and real sites. Edit: I see below that you already do this. Leaving this comment up though in case it helps other users.

by pkaye 9y ago

bronco21016 9y ago

Interested to hear your process for this. I remember a DIY book scanner some years ago but OCR etc have progressed a lot in the 5 years or so since I last read about that. Do you have some kind of dedicated scanner? Just photos? What do you use for processing. I’d love to do this for the bookshelf of reference books that I still occasionally reach out to but are taking up a ton of space.

pkaye 9y ago
For things like manuals, data books and those that are no longer sold I just search Google or archive.org for pdf copies. For other commercial books, the easiest thing is something like 1DollarScan.com which will tear open the book bindings and scan for you. Other approaches that worked in the past include 1) knew a family member who worked in a copy store where I could play with a fast scanner. 2) Some publishers like Oreilly's in the past let you get pdf copies for free or nominal price if you provide proof that you bought a paper copy. 3) I have scanner at home for small books or documents but it is usually too much manual work. But largely over the past 5+ years, I only buy DRM free pdf books. Many of the technical book publishers have sales throughout the year on their website where you can buy books at steep discount. I'm just a pdf book packrat :)

bringtheaction 9y ago

A lot of books can be found as PDF or ePub on pirate sites. If you already paid for the physical book there is zero moral issue in pirating a digital version of the book rather than spending your time manually scanning it and having to deal with OCR problems etc. So yeah I recommend you always look for a pirate version first before you decide to scan. You will come across a lot of spam, but if you know what to look for it's pretty easy to quickly distinguish fake sites from the legit ones. If you don't know what to look for you will discover that soon enough after you've run across enough fake and real sites. Edit: I see below that you already do this. Leaving this comment up though in case it helps other users.