Bad news for libraries on ebook lending

[doncr]

Sorry that I wasn't clear enough for you to understand what I'm doing.  Let me simplify it for you so that there is no misunderstanding.

I buy a used book.  I scan the book.  I read the resulting eBook.  I then have no use for the book or eBook so I delete the eBook from my devices and computer, then resell the book as a used book.  Got it?

It's the same thing with library books that I check out from my local public library.  I scan, read the eBook, then delete the eBook and return the library book.  Got it?

I have a collection of mainly technical books and non-fiction at my home.  I own these books.  I have scanned them and the resulting eBooks are on my computer.  I own the books.  I have made an eBook from them.  I do not distribute the eBook or book to anyone.  Got it?

There was no backpedalling involved here, only a misunderstanding on your part.  Read what I said about a Netflix-like subscription model.  That's what I really want for my fiction reading because most of time after I read an eBook, I don't want it any longer.  Since I can't resell an eBook after I purchase it from BN (I can't even give it away), I've found a way that I can make my own eBooks and get rid of them after I read it, at a cheaper price than what the eBook costs, and I can resell the book.  If I decide for some reason that I want to keep the eBook (non-fiction ref material usually), I'll keep the original book and the eBook that I made.

I hope that clears things up.  Have a nice day.

Yours always,

Scanner Dude

[BeachCatFan]

Why on earth would you do all of that scanning, then reading, and then deleting? That doesn't make one bit of sense to me. Not buying it.......sorry!

[doncr]

I built the scanner to digitize my home library.  For over 95% of the books in my collection, there are no eBooks versions.  Even if there were, it would cost several thousand dollars to get an eBook version of all of them, so the scanner was the logical choice for me to digitize my entire book collection.

After that monumental job was completed I have this nice scanner sitting here and for less than 20 minutes of my time I can scan a 300 page book and have an eBook on my device in the morning.  Going the used book route saves me money and the scanner is already there, so why not?  

There are also some books and magazines that have no eBook versions, or the eBook version is a quick hack, poorly formatted job that isn't worth the time to read.  So for me, spending the small amount of time to scan the material is worth it.  Since my home collection has been digitized, it's rare that I'd scan more than a few books a month.  Some of my coworkers have expressed interest in digitizing their home libraries so I might be helping them with that in one of these days, but these days my time spent scanning books isn't as much as you've imagined.

[Weedy533]

Just for comparison:

My Library

For Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

9 paper 35 on the waiting list

14 e books 84 on the waiting list.

The Orlando Public Library is wonderful. They will deliver books to your home free of charge, will pull books from the shelf and hold them at the front desk for you to pick up. So I read both e books and paper. I will always do the e book first, if they don't have an e version I will order the paper. It's just easier.

[zeddAZ]

doncr, I'd be interested in some more details about your scanning set-up...what computer and scanner you have and what software you use. Can you really do 300 pages in 20 mins?

[doncr]

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zeddAZ wrote:

doncr, I'd be interested in some more details about your scanning set-up...what computer and scanner you have and what software you use. Can you really do 300 pages in 20 mins?

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diybookscanner.org

The scanner is of my own design.  It uses two cameras so that it captures two pages at once.  This takes about five seconds.  At that rate, 300 pages would take 12.5 mins.  

I said "under 20 mins" because there is some setup and calibration performed before the book is scanned, as well as transfer time to get the images off of the cameras and into the PC for post-processing. This bit of "overhead" can take another 5 minutes or so.  The post-processing of acquired page images and subsequent OCR is all automated and runs overnight or while I'm at work during the day.  The time that can take varies on what is scanned and the image quality.

[zeddAZ]

Looks ineresting. Thanks for the pointer.