Once all of that is done, it then has to be processed for OCR and all of the mistakes the OCR make will need to be corrected... and a spell checker WILL NOT find all of the mistakes.
I've read several e-books that were produced from OCR scans. In general, the number of errors increases toward the end of the book, as the person doing it runs out of patience with correcting them, or if not using a document feeder, gets sloppier aligning the page on the scanner in the first place.
In one notable case, every single instance of a character saying "Ok" was rendered as "QX".
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Or you could use a page scanner. I wouldn't use the pen version, but the flat version, much easier and you don't destroy the book.
Also, much quicker than trying to lay a book flat on some sort of screen and such since you have the scanner to the book instead of the book to the scanner.
Pen version would be a pain though, that's line by line, wouldn't ever do that method.
Much quicker with the flat page scanner...so much quicker too.
It still would be easier with the Paizo Paperbacks though (most were designed to lay flatter with the creases in the cover), you could even use that on the typical scanner/printer you find in the stores with no problem...and that would be even faster still.
Don't see why anyone would have to destroy any books with the right equipment, though I suppose there are many who don't know about the right equipment or how to scan something...that's the only reason I can understand people discussing destroying books via scanning and such.
Because dedicated page scanners are not all that common and tend to run $600 and up for a decent one... and this is someone who doesn't want to pay an extra $10 for a PDF.
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The OP felt he was being charged too much if he wanted both products.
I don't see buying just the PDF, and printing out a hardcopy, as being much of a saving. Taking the latest hardback, Mythic Adventures, as an example: the book has 256 pages. You can buy a copy from Amazon for $30, or roughly 12c/page, and get a nicely-bound copy. You're going to end up paying something around that even if you've got your own printer (although you can reduce the cost by using ink cartridge refills).
In one notable case, every single instance of a character saying "Ok" was rendered as "QX".That is, of course, a Lensman reference.
It was the Lensman series. Are you telling me it was supposed to be like that? It seemed like such an odd thing to say out loud that after I figured it out I just assumed some combination of the font and the OCR read the O as a Q and the K as an X.
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Modules Overlord
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It was the lensman series. Are you telling me it was supposed to be like that?In one notable case, every single instance of a character saying "Ok" was rendered as "QX".That is, of course, a Lensman reference.
I hadn't realized you were discussing Lensman, I thought someone had gotten cute.
Yes, Doc Smith wanted to change the language a little, so it would be clear it was the far-flung future. So in addition to oddities such as Q-Type Helixes and similar undefined terms, he used QX in place of OK.
That goes back to the original print books, at least, and I suspect all the way back to the serialized releases.
Well, I learned something today.
I should have commented about the Lensman reference. I recognized it too.
Speaking as someone who's digitized more than a few books for personal use, both novels and RPG related, frankly it's a hell of a lot less hassle to just buy the digital copy if it's available. Even with the RPG stuff, where I just scan and make image based PDFs without bothering to check the OCR I sometimes still find issues later on that I missed at the time I did the scans and cleaned up the images. And with novels, even with spellcheckers and experience with checking my work, I still know when I read the book later on that I'll find errors, sometimes in the spelling, but more often in formatting. Which I then note and fix later on when I get around to reading the book.
The frustrating thing for me isn't having to pay more for a digital version, it's not being able to buy a digital version at all. Which is why my current project on those lines is Wolfe's Lake of the Long Sun. I bought all the others digitally, but the publishers involved haven't released that one book from the entire series... *bangs head against the wall*