This post is the beginning of a series on how to destroy all your books while preserving all the information inside them (yes, even your margin notes), for a better and more portable reading experience. Before I go into the how, here is the why...
My wife and I are book fiends. By that I mean we lost the war a long time ago. Several bookshelves are double-layered and stuffed to the brim and book piles teem from behind our couch. We are good customers to the publishing industry. Despite working in a library, I still buy most of the books I read.
I happen to own a 2lb laptop which I can carry everywhere, and love it. On the other hand, I'm still working my way through Against the Day after a year or two, and I mostly blame the fact that it's too heavy to bring on the subway conveniently.
A lot of people complain about reading from screens, but it's getting easier every day. I don't like the DRM on the Kindle, but e-Paper in better forms is coming as soon as this Christmas.
Speaking of DRM, I buy ebooks, too, when they're available--I'll even pay a premium (despite how ridiculous that is, considering the decreased cost for the publishers). They're only sold DRM-ified, but there are some tools to fix that.
That shores up the problem for some new books, but not all of them (I can't find Against the Day in .mobi format). It also doesn't solve the problem that the books are already taking over my couch.
Thus, we come to book scanning.
Book Scanning
First, you might say Google is doing the work for us. They certainly have scanned a lot of books, but unless you only read books from before 1923 or the US Congress suddenly gets a clue, most of your bookshelf will be unavailable that way.
Even as old an opus as Shakespeare really benefits from contemporary editing and analysis.
If you want to keep your books, and have a lot of time to turn the pages, then check out the BookLiberator Project. I don't have that kind of time, nor do I trust my home electronic-craft-project skills.
For me, the whole point is really to get rid of my books while preserving my margin-notes and have my entire library available on my laptop (and backed up to insure against a fire or flood). So, I bought a scanner with a friend and the journey has begun. My bookshelf is emptying a couple inches at a time. Future posts will explain in detail how we're going about it.
Don't liberate your books!
I can see the benefit of turning a personal book collection into a digital collection, but this prospect really scares me. As someone who hopes to be a published author someday, I hate the idea of book piracy being made so easy-- and I'm not a fan of Google Books, either. I'm all for switching to digital books, but I worry that if legal practice like yours became widespread, it could easily channel into illegal book swapping. This is also my biggest fear about e-books becoming the norm, although at least publisher-issued e-books are somewhat protected. It's very hard to make money as an author (or publisher) as it is.
What do you think?
@Maya, I hope to be a
@Maya, I hope to be a published author some day, too! But that puts me consciously in the intersection of this Venn diagram:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/true-dat.ht...
I'm also deeply concerned about what the world will look like and what kind of institutions we'll need to promote democracy, a vigilent press, and great literature and art in this new era where copying is easy. But that world is here. Successful artists and businesses need to adapt to the times, because we can't legislate away the (beautiful) reality that copying is now very easy.
Some authors have figured out how to navigate the new era, and I think the best thing we can do is learn from them:
http://craphound.com/?p=2322
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