View Full Version : Going Paperless - Tech Advice - Kindle Fire
Scibility
09-04-2012, 08:04
So i'm going to contribute to saving a few trees :grin: I'm thoroughly enjoying the Kindle fire. What an AMAZING little toy. I can't say enough about it, and HIGHLY recommend it to anyone on the fence about buying one.
Reading on the Fire is such a fantastic experience... I thought I would miss the physical feel of a book, and turning pages etc, but I absolutely don't. Now (as with all things I become enamored with), i've forging full ahead, and I want to digitize my current library. heheh. I know, I know.
My question is, does anyone know how I can easily do this??? I'm not keen on the idea of cutting off the binding on the books to then reglue them, but if I have to, so be it. I've heard of taking photos of each pages and then converting the photos, but I wonder about the quality in the end. Other than that, has anyone digitized their books with relative ease, and without purchasing any expensive gadgets/ software etc? I already have a scanner, and an open-source pdf program.
Any suggestions would be greatly welcomed.
Also, any ideas or tips on how you use your kindle with your regularly used books would be great. What are the best ways to make/keep notes and bookmarks? The highlight feature is great. Please share your ideas. I'd love to know. Thanks!
bogiesan
09-04-2012, 23:10
Digitizing a library. An interesting idea. Let me be practical for a moment. Have you used your scanner before to capture multiple paged documents? Give it a try if you have not. Even a speedy scanner anc software combination needs 60-300 seconds to complete the page and perform the optical character recognition and then you must proofread it. You can bypass the OCR if all you want are images of the pages but you won't be able to search or use hypertext apps. A 300 page tarot book, assuming verso and recto captured in one pass, and plenty of illustrations and a comprehensive index could take two days to grab, process, assemble, correct and arrange within the software.
Easier to buy the e-book versions.
Off the shelf product hacks less than $200:
http://hacknmod.com/hack/dirt-simple-book-to-e-book-scanner/
High speed text scanners can be hacked:
http://vimeo.com/4219953
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/
http://www.paperupgrade.org/blogs/workshop-building-high-speed-diy-book-scanner
And, of course, the service can be paid for:
http://www.merrittgraphics.com/landing/boundbook/?gclid=CP69vJbqp68CFWHDtgodHzvRaQ
Scanning a whole book is a BIG PAIN. I know this; I once did it. And I did it because I am hot stuff at scanning, OCR and pdfing. Even so....
I'd bite the bullet and buy the things pre-digitized.
Scibility
10-04-2012, 09:54
Digitizing a library. An interesting idea. Let me be practical for a moment. Have you used your scanner before to capture multiple paged documents? Give it a try if you have not. Even a speedy scanner anc software combination needs 60-300 seconds to complete the page and perform the optical character recognition and then you must proofread it. You can bypass the OCR if all you want are images of the pages but you won't be able to search or use hypertext apps. A 300 page tarot book, assuming verso and recto captured in one pass, and plenty of illustrations and a comprehensive index could take two days to grab, process, assemble, correct and arrange within the software.
Easier to buy the e-book versions.
Off the shelf product hacks less than $200:
http://hacknmod.com/hack/dirt-simple-book-to-e-book-scanner/
High speed text scanners can be hacked:
http://vimeo.com/4219953
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/
http://www.paperupgrade.org/blogs/workshop-building-high-speed-diy-book-scanner
And, of course, the service can be paid for:
http://www.merrittgraphics.com/landing/boundbook/?gclid=CP69vJbqp68CFWHDtgodHzvRaQ
HOLY Cow Bogiesan! Thanks for the links, and the ideas. Just looking at those setups gave me bleeding ulcers! LOL. ok. i'm completeley not going to get high tech with it, so any high end page turners, and all that stuff is not going to be healthy for me :D I thought of buying the ebook versions, but that would be quite expensive to do... Have you heard of Omipage? From what I heard, it would allow text - editing functions from photos. This sounds like an easier alternative? Any thoughts?
Scibility
10-04-2012, 10:12
Scanning a whole book is a BIG PAIN. I know this; I once did it. And I did it because I am hot stuff at scanning, OCR and pdfing. Even so....
I'd bite the bullet and buy the things pre-digitized.
Thanks for the feedback gregory! I'll PM my paypal account so you can make a donation to the cause :D
Seriously though, Did you use a scanner with an automatic document feeder when you scanned your books? With my scanner, I can put a stack of pages in, and walk away. When I come back I can just save the file as a pdf. So i was thinking that if I removed the binding, loaded the scanner, and came back whenever it was done, that shouldn't be too painful?
I really do want to try OCR, but don't have any experience with it. PLEASE let me pick your brain... Is there a cheaper alternative to Adobe for this? Have you tried doing it from images?
I think i'll try scanning only my most favourite books since you and Bogiesan seem to be saying the same thing ie. "are you nuts?" :-) I'm just completely blown away by how much nicer it is to read the digital versus regular hard copy text.
Also, something I wasn't aware of is, no more futzing around with dog ears, notepapers, and trying to remember which margin your favourite note is written on. It's so much easier to search, bookmark, and FIND whatever text you are looking for. Not to mention much easier on the eyes to me. I also love the potential to be able to travel with all my books in such a compact form... very very appealing. I can't say enough about it. I remember several months back wondering what is all the fuss about these ereaders? I was already reading books on my computer anyway. But now I know!
with the exception of out of print books, it would be way easier, probably much cheaper - and the printing would be clearer - if you just bought e-book versions of your favorites.
I bought a Kindle Fire for my mom as a combo birthday xmas gift. We were not sure she would use it, she doesn't even have a cell phone or know how to program a VCR, and the only computer she used was at her job....but she does love to read and has been having trouble with her eyesight (macular degeneration)....so I thought that the kindle, with it's lit up screens and large font ability, would be good for her - and she LOVES IT! She is on her 4th book and plays Words With Friends (scrabble) with 4 or 5 people. I wouldn't say the kindle fire is perfect, though - but the tech support phone people have fixed any problems.
I want one too - but I know I will continue to read "real" books as well!
HOLY Cow Bogiesan! Thanks for the links, and the ideas. Just looking at those setups gave me bleeding ulcers! LOL. ok. i'm completeley not going to get high tech with it, so any high end page turners, and all that stuff is not going to be healthy for me :D I thought of buying the ebook versions, but that would be quite expensive to do... Have you heard of Omipage? From what I heard, it would allow text - editing functions from photos. This sounds like an easier alternative? Any thoughts?
I HAVE Omnipage (yes it does - you convert the photos to text, in effect) but I prefer Textbridge. The Windows OCR scanner isn't bad either (IT came with my XP machine, or maybe with my Office suite... - checks - yes, it is under Office Tools) - you have to save photos as black and white tifs and then run them through. But trust me, it takes ages; you are working one or at most two pages at a time, and even for a 100 page book that is 50 photos/scans.... - and THEN you only have to go through and correct all the mistakes and believe me, there will be LOADS.
The process goes like this. Put page in FLAT BED scanner (just flatten the book.) Camera not good. as not as flat. I know this. Trust me. Just don't. The words down the margin go weird. They probably do anyway.
Scan AS GREYSCALE (yes, a book is usually b/w. Your scanner assumes it is colour even so. Then you only have to change the mode afterwards...)
Rinse and repeat. (I never do more than 4 scans before saving, as they tend to lose themselves, but that may be my machine.)
Save all as TIF files if you want to use the MS Office scanner.
Then:
Open up your trusty OCR programme and open the relevant pages in whatever way it tells you to (import/view/open). Then you have to set each one to OCR individually. When you've done THAT, export the whole thing to your word processor. THEN - edit for all sorts - even line breaks sometimes. Certainly for spelling; any rare words it will kindly substitute something laughable for you. And don't assume that you will get the original page numbers etc. Well you will - but they won't necessarily be in the right place on the page....
I do have to do this quite often for documents we need here. I really wouldn't THINK about it for another whole book. I did one, once. NEVER again.
OCR does NOT give you the book as you see him. Plain image scans and putting the lot in a pdf would - but that would be one MASSIVE file, and I don't know if your machine could cope with pdfs anyway - I am told some do but not all. You'd effectively be reading photographs of each page. NO nonsense about zooming in and having the text adjust itself to fit; you'd have to scroll sideways with each line...
If you do this - well, I hope you have fewer than 50 books, and that you are retired and weren't planning to do anything else any time soon. Really.
I need to have a lie down now. I am exhausted just thinking about it. And I am EXPERIENCED in this stuff. I used to have to OCR a lot at work, too.
ETA Just saw that you plan to use an auto feeder. Does it flip the pages ? If not you WILL have to do it twice - and of course, you will wreck the books. Sure you will then have a pdf. See above re scrolling etc. You can edit that if you have a pdf editor - though you shouldn't need to, as they will just be images. I have never tried to run a pdf through an OCR programme, but it is still one page at a time stuff, as far as I know, and you would lose the pagination, I suspect, unless you have the patience to go through and change the paper size till it exactly fits, and check each page as some will always have fewer lines than others and you would need to add manual page breaks, and so on....
Omnipage does appear to do this all in one now - so good luck; it isn't exactly cheap....
Babalon Jones
11-04-2012, 00:11
I have been toying with the idea of an e-reader for awhile, but the one thing that has stopped me is that so many of the books I like aren't available yet. Also, paying 9.99 for an e-version when you can get the book itself for say, 12.99, just seems silly sometimes.
Still very tempting though!
I have been toying with the idea of an e-reader for awhile, but the one thing that has stopped me is that so many of the books I like aren't available yet. Also, paying 9.99 for an e-version when you can get the book itself for say, 12.99, just seems silly sometimes.
Still very tempting though!
I have the Amazon kindle on my laptop and the app on my iPad. It was free to download so I thought I would try it. Firstly I went through all the free books available but then started to buy books. I'm an avid reader and I wouldn't go back to book reading now. It's so much more convenient having all my books in one place.
Try the free kindle and see if you like the idea, I have friends who hate the idea of not having a book in their hands or be able to turn pages but I'm a convert. :)
Aurora369
11-04-2012, 02:33
I have a Kindle that I received as a Yule present and I do enjoy taking it back and forth to work instead of lugging around some of the larger books. However, that being said, I could never imagine taking a book I have apart to scan it for use with my Kindle. I do buy books for the Kindle and am using the free books apps available, but I have far too many books dealing with Tarot, Witchcraft, Herbs, etc., to even contemplate taking them apart to scan. I like going to certain books and rummaging through them to do research, etc.
Going paperless, you can just buy the e-books for the Kindle and keep the ones you already have as they are. Just my two cents.
Little Hare
11-04-2012, 09:37
I have a kindle :D am a convert (we dont' have the fire here in australia), Its so great! I don't miss the paper version of books at all. The only thing I have a problem with here in Australia is that the publishers are giving aussies one price( ridiculously high) where as in the US the book might be half that price ;/
Scibility
15-04-2012, 02:58
I bought a Kindle Fire for my mom as a combo birthday xmas gift. We were not sure she would use it, she doesn't even have a cell phone or know how to program a VCR, and the only computer she used was at her job....but she does love to read and has been having trouble with her eyesight (macular degeneration)....so I thought that the kindle, with it's lit up screens and large font ability, would be good for her - and she LOVES IT! She is on her 4th book and plays Words With Friends (scrabble) with 4 or 5 people. I wouldn't say the kindle fire is perfect, though - but the tech support phone people have fixed any problems.
I want one too - but I know I will continue to read "real" books as well!
I had to chuckle after reading this, I was imagining your mom and her kindle playing words with friends. I'm hopelessly addicted to Scrabble. It's a sickness, and I really don't want to be cured of it :-) Keep an "eye" on her, that macular degeneration might be taxed to the limit if she stays on there indefinitely :-)
Scrabble anyone? hehehe. sorry, couldn't help myself.
Scibility
15-04-2012, 03:24
ETA Just saw that you plan to use an auto feeder. Does it flip the pages ? If not you WILL have to do it twice - and of course, you will wreck the books. Sure you will then have a pdf. See above re scrolling etc. You can edit that if you have a pdf editor - though you shouldn't need to, as they will just be images. I have never tried to run a pdf through an OCR programme, but it is still one page at a time stuff, as far as I know, and you would lose the pagination, I suspect, unless you have the patience to go through and change the paper size till it exactly fits, and check each page as some will always have fewer lines than others and you would need to add manual page breaks, and so on....
Omnipage does appear to do this all in one now - so good luck; it isn't exactly cheap....
Gregory! Oh my goodness... Thanks so much for taking the time to type this all out! :bugeyed: Huge huge help, because I really don't know what i'm doing, and it's all a big experiment.
You're so funny gregory. I needed a nap myself after reading how to actually do it... Ignorance is surely bliss isn't it? Oh the grand ideas we can conceive when we know nothing about what we're doing LOL.
You've saved me tons of aggravation b/c I had no idea about the greyscale issue,and I certainly didn't realize that the OCR would alter the pagination/spelling etc. (duh).
My scanner doesn't do both sides. I'm not retired, and I do have munchkins, so although I think I have the time, i'm not sure ... I really want to try this though. I'm going to maybe try a smallish book first and see what happens. I don't actually have that many personal books. I usually do a regular haunting of the library.
Thanks again so much Gregory. I'm sure the info is going to be helpful to lots of people.
Oh, BTW, if you haven't tried PDFsam (http://www.pdfsam.org/?page_id=3)
it's a terrific free little program. I use it all the time to create my own "ebooks" from bits and bobs of information I collect all over the place. I still haven't figured out how to make table of contents or anything like that, but i'm thrilled with just having the ability to access my notes as digital files.
Scibility
15-04-2012, 03:33
I have a Kindle that I received as a Yule present and I do enjoy taking it back and forth to work instead of lugging around some of the larger books. However, that being said, I could never imagine taking a book I have apart to scan it for use with my Kindle. I do buy books for the Kindle and am using the free books apps available, but I have far too many books dealing with Tarot, Witchcraft, Herbs, etc., to even contemplate taking them apart to scan. I like going to certain books and rummaging through them to do research, etc.
Going paperless, you can just buy the e-books for the Kindle and keep the ones you already have as they are. Just my two cents. Thanks for the feedback Aurora369. With inflation, that 2 cents was worth quite a lot more than you think :-)
I'm sort of backpeddling just a little now. Maybe it was too ambitious now that I know what would be involved. I think i'm going to try it first and see how it goes, then maybe just do what you said from here on forward.
I was almost mortified at the thought of dismantling my books, but then I found an old book on my shelf that was falling apart, and I realized that only the portion of the paperback that is by the spine is actually glued, and taking it apaprt would be a very easy process as well as putting it back together. I don't think i'd try it with a hardcover though. That's part of where my grandiose idea originated :-) I thought I'd be able to just dismantle it, and drop it in the scanner and away i'd go... NOT. :TFOOL
Scibility
15-04-2012, 03:40
I have a kindle :D am a convert (we dont' have the fire here in australia), Its so great! I don't miss the paper version of books at all. The only thing I have a problem with here in Australia is that the publishers are giving aussies one price( ridiculously high) where as in the US the book might be half that price ;/
The prices on the Canadian store for hard copies are also different than in the US store, and sometimes incredibly more expensive. I can only imagine how much they charge you all the way in Australia... Not to mention the shipping :bugeyed:
It was so funny, when first using the kindle, everytime it was time to turn the page I was reaching to the corner of the kindle to flip LOL!! :TFOOL old habits die HARD.
Little Hare
15-04-2012, 12:05
The prices on the Canadian store for hard copies are also different than in the US store, and sometimes incredibly more expensive. I can only imagine how much they charge you all the way in Australia... Not to mention the shipping :bugeyed:
It was so funny, when first using the kindle, everytime it was time to turn the page I was reaching to the corner of the kindle to flip LOL!! :TFOOL old habits die HARD.
The thing is the high prices are back firing on the publishers }) there is an aussie kindle forum and there are a lot of members and as soon as people find out the price is so high. there is a mass emailing to the publishers explaining how fans won't buy the book :bugeyed: I'd hate to be the person recieving all that email.
LOL at reaching for the corner of the page!
MountainGirl
15-04-2012, 14:01
I have been toying with the idea of an e-reader for awhile, but the one thing that has stopped me is that so many of the books I like aren't available yet. Also, paying 9.99 for an e-version when you can get the book itself for say, 12.99, just seems silly sometimes.
Still very tempting though!
I don't mind paying for books and I can afford them. What I can't afford is more bookshelfs and a bigger house to put them in , so that's where the Kindle is really helpful.
Blessings,
MountainGirl
Scibility
21-04-2012, 07:53
Just in case anyone else was interested in trying this experiment, I did attempt it on an old out of print book that was heading for the trash. It was in really poor condition.
It took about 25 minutes total to scan approximately 300 pages in three batches.
The part that took the most time was familiarizing myself with the various software I was attempting to use. If I knew what I was doing, I think the whole process shouldn't have taken more than 1.5 hours.
Overall it was a successful project, and I would try it again. Someone with experience might look at it and think "what on earth!", but for a first attempt i'm pretty excited about the possibilities.
Thanks again Gregory for all your help. You saved me a lot of aggravation.
Additional advice I might offer:
1) I didn't do OCR, and I tried converting it to a .mobi file from a pdf. It worked, but the text enlarge feature won't work on the Kindle when doing this. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but just a warning, it may be better to just keep the document as a .PDF if you're not tech saavy.
2) also when converting the document to .mobi, when it is viewed, the pages show as alternating from one side to another with the white space reversed. Even when I cropped all the pages (in bulk), it still didn't display properly as a .mobi file. So again, keeping it as a .PDF might be easier
3) I would recommend scanning in batches of about 50 pages (front and back of each page), then checking to make sure you have all the pages before continuing.
4) I would also recommend cropping in bulk. Select all the left hand pages from the scan job, and then select the area of one of the pages that you want to crop, and your program should do ALL of them at once. Then do the same with the right hand pages.
5) if you do convert to .mobi file, the document shows up with the cover page and you can sort it etc. If you keep it as a .pdf, it will show up in your documents, and the cover image doesn't display, just the title. I don't recommend converting to .mobi unless you really know how to mess around with the various conversion options.
CAVEAT: without OCR you will not be able to search the document, and as gregory said the page numbers may not coincide with the table of contents exactly, but you can use the kindle bookmarks or notes feature to keep track of where different chapters start.
Hope this is helpful to someone else out there. Happy Scanning!
SolSionnach
21-04-2012, 09:22
Is there ANYTHING that our Gregory hasn't done?? wow, woman, you kill me...
Just a note: I LOVE LOVE LOVE emailing docs to my kindle. .rtf, .doc, .pdf, they all are easily readable and work GREAT on the regular e-ink kindle. You can't change the font size on the pdfs, but they usually are readable if you set the kindle to landscape mode.
I've made text files from some of the TdM reading threads, and I love having them with me to study away from the computer without having to print them up. I can think of some major threads (like MiShell's on shamanism) that would be wonderful cut and pasted into a text file, and uploaded to your kindle.
You get an email address (xxxxx@kindle.com) where you can email stuff to your kindle. They don't show up on kindle for mac, as far as I can tell... haven't checked on kindle for iphone yet.
Scibility, what a great resource. Love what you did. I don't have a scanner, though. ;) Next year, maybe (if the world doesn't end 12/21/12!)
Scibility
27-04-2012, 03:29
Is there ANYTHING that our Gregory hasn't done?? wow, woman, you kill me...
Just a note: I LOVE LOVE LOVE emailing docs to my kindle. .rtf, .doc, .pdf, they all are easily readable and work GREAT on the regular e-ink kindle. You can't change the font size on the pdfs, but they usually are readable if you set the kindle to landscape mode.
I've made text files from some of the TdM reading threads, and I love having them with me to study away from the computer without having to print them up. I can think of some major threads (like MiShell's on shamanism) that would be wonderful cut and pasted into a text file, and uploaded to your kindle.
You get an email address (xxxxx@kindle.com) where you can email stuff to your kindle. They don't show up on kindle for mac, as far as I can tell... haven't checked on kindle for iphone yet.
Scibility, what a great resource. Love what you did. I don't have a scanner, though. ;) Next year, maybe (if the world doesn't end 12/21/12!)
Great Tips! Thanks for sharing! I'll have to try the search function to find the thread you mentioned. This site is so extensive there are corners of it I have never even explored. Btw, LOL re: the scanner :-) I highly recommend having one of those too. Really glad this was helpful to you. I'm always busy doing something or the other, but I agree, I think Gregory reigns in that department :-)
I have a kindle :D am a convert (we dont' have the fire here in australia), Its so great! I don't miss the paper version of books at all. The only thing I have a problem with here in Australia is that the publishers are giving aussies one price( ridiculously high) where as in the US the book might be half that price ;/
!!!wow!!!! That is outrageous! Print books cost more to ship to Australia but now the publishers are taking advantage of the fact that people in Australia have gotten used to paying more for things.
I am also pissed off at how difficult some publishers (*cough* Penguin *cough*) have made it for people to borrow ebooks from the local library here in the states. There is really no way a regular person can in some way steal or "hack" the ebook and the library buys a contract for the book to go out a limited number of times (usually under 20) after it is borrowed that many times it gets zapped into oblivion. So the publishers actually could make more money than on a print book which could circulate 100s of times.
Some publishers will not let libraries make certain of their books available as ebooks at all and sometimes they make it so you can't download the borrowed ebook right onto your kindle it has to go on to a computer first, which means unless you lug your computer to the library you can't download the book.
Having a bunch of books available on a small device is absolute heaven. I love the idea of emailing tarot notes to my kindle... haven't tried that yet.