Change any book to an e-book

Not everyone relishes walking around with a suitcase of books in their vacation. The latest batch of e-readers have deprived us of the weight, dust and fire hazard of paper. A modern e-book reader can easily fit 3.000 books and needs charging only once a month. Hopefully I have already convinced you that it beats paperbacks hands down. But what if your favourite book is not available as an e-book? No problem. You can easily change any book to an e-book. Here's how:

Step 1: Scan the book (about 1 hr on a flatbed vs 15' on a batch)

The first step is to have a corresponding jpeg or pdf file for every page of the book. If it's a heavy book, it will be easier to photograph each page with a digital camera. If the book is manageable, you can use a flatbed scanner. It takes roughly an hour for your average 200 page paperback. If you don't mind destroying the book, then you can remove the bind with a cutter and feed the individual pages in a batch to a scanner such as the Canon P-150. It will only take 15 minutes in total. When you are done, make sure that you have all the pages and in consecutive order.

Step 2: OCR-Optical Character Recognition (about 30')

Next you must change the photographs (jpeg or pdf) to characters your office software can read (rtf, doc or other) so you need OCR software. Nowadays, good OCR software is extremely accurate. If you can afford it (it costs around $400) or use it through a friend or employer then ABBYY fine reader or Adobe will make your later editing task easier. Of course cheaper, or even the OCR software given with a scanner, is quite adequate. This process is a machine job.

Step 3: Editing (about 4 hrs)

Once your book has been converted to rtf or doc then your word processor will underline almost all the mistakes made by the OCR process as spelling errors. Most mistakes occur from printing problems (ink spots, paper stains or washed out letters). The worst case occurs when you have local dialogue in fiction; there everything is underlined. Editing is the most time consuming process in e-book conversion but it can't be skipped. Hemingway is not Hemingway if he has spelling mistakes and missing words.

Step 4: e-book format (about 30')

The final step is to change your corrected rtf or doc document to the formats that your e-book reader can read: epub (the international e-book standard) or mobi (used in the Amazon Kindle). The easiest way to do this is to download Calibre, which is open source freeware and it's the iTunes of e-books. You can use this program to add a cover to your e-book (scan your own or download from Amazon) as well as load your finished e-book to your e-reader or smart-phone.

If you want to zip from the table of contents to a particular story or chapter in the e-book, or add the photographs or sketches that the OCR software omitted, or must have the e-book appear precisely the way you it want to, then you have to edit the e-book. The easiest way to edit books in the e-pub format is to download and use Sigil which is also open source freeware. If you own a Kindle then you can use Calibre to change e-pub to mobi.

Converting a book to an e-book is not everyone's cup of tea. It's a time consuming affair and you can't share your finished work with your friends. No one can stop you from converting a book you own to an e-book for your own use, but when you start passing it around, you are breaking the law. I think that it's well worth the effort for a book you really love and want to have with you.

But then again I also write mystery thrillers for a hobby!