How to Scan your Own Books (or use a book scanning service)

There are services that offer to scan books and create electronic versions. Most are pretty expensive, but 1DollarScan.com holds out the prospect of scanning your book for $1.00. It’s not really quite that cheap, but it is the least expensive of the book scanning services that I’ve found to date, and I decided to try it. a non-destructive book scanner First of all, the pricing is a good deal more complicated than their come-on suggests. It starts with a dollar for a “set” of 100 pages or fraction thereof. That is, for instance, a book with 400 pages counts as four units, and so does one with 302 pages. Not just numbered pages but all that can be scanned (since each sheet of paper has two sides, there is always an even number of pages). That’s just for a barebones 300 dpi image scan, and if you want something usable you start adding options that can run the price up by several more dollars. However, just to make it all the more confusing, they offer discount bundles. The “Platinum Membership” costs $99.99 per month for up to 100 sets, including the most essential options. The “Platinum Lite” version gives you [...]

For nearly two years, Daniel Reetz dreamed of a book scanner that could crunch textbooks and spit out digital files he could then read on his PC. Book scan