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Four-cents a page for book-scanning? Consumer quote from BlueLeaf-Book-Scanning.com
January 3, 2010 | 8:30 pm
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By David Rothman
Don’t want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on decent scanning equipment to digitize books? Maybe you’re even a student who wants audio versions of p-books for your iPod—so you can study while excising.
Well, if its online claims are true, BlueLeaf-Book-Scanning.com can help you—with a basic scanning charge of just four cents a page, with good accuracy claimed, as well as a delivery time of “four to eight business days upon receipt of package.”
The price is only for bound material. I don’t know what it would be for manuscripts. Read the price information carefully. The charge is $14.95 minimum, excluding extras like audio and non-PDF and non-Word formats; Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader files are among the options. Return shipping is free.
This could be a helluva a deal for individuals and small publishers. Talk about the potential for getting back lists into E and POD! If you try the Connecticut-based service—well, that’s where your books go—please share your impressions. Does the ballyhoo hold up? The FAQ is here.
Thought: If a 300-page book costs $12 to scan—well, $14.95 and postage to Connecticut—imagine the possibility of buying a used p-copy and getting back a nonDRMed Word file that you can easily turn via Word or Open Office into RTF and then into a variety of formats through Calibre (update: actually $23).
I just hope that this service is as useful as it sounds, and that it can thrive. Will large publishers or others shut it down as a piracy helper? I’d hope not, but these days, you never know. I don’t know what the liability situation is. Any lawyers care to venture an opinion?
Big thanks to sample007 for the discovery. Anybody know of other cheapie services like BlueLeaf’s?
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Comments:
I would be very cautious about the formatting quality and the POD quality. You get what you pay for, especially in eBook formatting.
Pardon me, but it seems that a 300-page book would cost 22.95$ to scan – 14.95$ for 1 book and 8$ for 300 pages (of which 100 are free), according to the calculator on http://www.blueleaf-book-scanning.com/book_scanning_service_order.html
Josh and M:
J: Let’s reserve judgment until someone tries the service, but, yes, I wonder.
M: Thanks. When I actually used the calculator, that’s the scanning cost, $23—exactly why I put a question mark after the 4 cent quote. Still, an interesting deal, though, if it’s what it is cracked up to be.
David
How is this NOT a violation of copywrite? I can’t see it happening.
I have a collection of 100 year old Pulp Mags, clearly public domain, But they are started to fall apart. How can I scan them myself at home, for my Sony E-reader? I don’t think I would risk mailing them to some one else. There must be a program that can turn my pdf scan into whatever my E-reader uses.
Thanks.
@the chief: You could try Calibre; it’s free, and does a pretty good job of converting between lots of ebook formats. Downsides: Calibre’s user interface can get confusing, and PDF (in general) is not the best format to convert from.
Although their pricing is good, I’ve found http://www.boundbookscanning.com based inNY to be an even more affordable book scanning service,
at $19.95 start fee and 7 cents per page. I’ve had great results with them