Sometimes you really do have to destroy the village in order to save it.
2. The trick to unbinding a standard paperback is heat (even if you're careful, cutting can damage the text, especially with an old cheap paperback). A heavy cast-iron skillet works well. Pre-heat the skillet to "medium". Place just the binding edge on the surface of the skillet for a few seconds. The pages should start to loosen enough to gently pull free. Be careful not to over-heat - you only want to soften the binding glue, not liquefy or vapourise it. I don't know the flash-point of binding glue or what it's made of, but it's probably not something you want to breathe. Carefully separate out the individual pages, re-heating the binding edge as needed. Don't neatly re-stack the pages, leave them in a loose pile until they've fully cooled. Watch out for glue strings and blobs.
Do I have to tell you that you really, really should never, ever use this skillet for cooking anymore?
3. Make sure your scanner will do at least 600dpi. I know all the OCR guides say 300 dpi, but the text in paperbacks is pretty small and you have contend with cheap fibrous paper and background discolouration, not to mention tea stains and such. 600 dpi gives your software something to work with. I find that scanning in Photo mode, greyscale, dark (underexposed), at high contrast seems to get the best results. Play around with your scanner's settings until you get something that works for your OCR program.
4. "Obtain" a real OCR program, not Acrobat's built-in ocr or some freeware app. No offence intended - I use lots of freeware and shareware myself - but OCR is something that requires a high-end program to get the job done right.
5. Proofing is a tedious pain in the ass, but it's really the most important part. To avoid burning out, I suggest limiting yourself to scanning-and-proofing 50 or so pages a day. It'll take around a week per book, but it's worth taking the time to do the job right. Remember, yours may well be the only e-copy of your favourite book that will ever be made. Proof responsibly.
6. When formatting your e-book, I find (have found, the hard way) that simpler is better. If you try too hard to make it pretty, it often gets confusing and garbled on an actual e-reader. Remember that not everyone has the same brand of ebook reader, so your ebook is probably going to go through at least one format conversion. Unnecessary bells-and-whistles don't translate well between ebook formats. Just make it easily readable and avoid anything fancy unless the text absolutely requires it.
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!
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Cold War in a Country Garden Page 16
