So I have a massive book collection... too massive.  I'm not the kind of guy who likes to get rid of anything.  But I know that it's gonna be h*ll for me ot move or anything with all this junk.  So I finally looked up book scanning services (they're usually in California) so I'm gonna try that... even the cheapest one I found, at a buck per 100 pages, is still gonna wind up costing once you factor in shipping and so on.  I think what I'm gonna try and do is get one of those flat-rate boxes, see how many books I can fit in there at a time, and send that.  I'm gonna send some "don't matter" books at first as a test, but if it works, I can finally get rid of that massive backlog of books, comics, magazines, and all that other stuff that's just weighing me down.

What would be REALLY great is if I can use this service to scan in all my old college sketchbooks, i have ZERO reason to keep them around and they weigh a ton.  Just getting rid of those would be a big lifesaver.

I really got to thinking about this while I was finishing up the Steve Jobs book and with my discussion with Mac about the end of discs, I feel like we might be reaching the end of the age of ownership and I think that kinda sucks... I don't want to lease everything, and have locks put on there by other people that I can't take off.  And I definitely didn't want to re-buy all my books at full price.  The book-scanning services seem like a good fit, it's all PDF, good quality, no DRM (that's one thing I will have ot wait and see... I can't imagine that they would put it on there)... that's what I want.  And I don't have the time or patience to scan all that sh*t in myself or get a book scanner.  Digital stuff like music and movies is easy, analog conversion is tough.  I'm not nuts about outsourcing it, but if it finally gets rid of this huge pile I've burdened myself with for so long, it'll be worth it.

I too have a massive library for DVD's, CD's and Books. But the approach that I've taken is to sell what I know I'll never touch again and put them on eBay. They have sold surprisingly well and at a price above the norm for used items. There are still a handful that I will keep. But thinning the herd has made things more manageable for me. Might be something you could do as well and get some $$$ in the process.

Well, I sent a test package today, nothing I couldn't replace if I had to, but that I still want... so we'll see how they turn out.  Here's hoping for the best.

Well, after a longer wait than I had expected, I got my files back and they look GREAT.  As good as I had hoped.

My test package consisted of a couple comic books (the new JLA and Archie) as well as two old books I found at the used bookstore.  The comics came out GREAT, and with a cheap PDF editor I got from the app store I can remove the ads and useless pages, export them all into images, compress, whatever.  I should also be able to use Prizmo to translate the proper books into text and create something that I can actually edit and play around with... they offer to do this for you, but at another buck per 100 pages... considering the bulk I'm gonna go through, not worth it.

The only real issue is that they charge you an extra buck to title your file the name of the book... I'm not biting that, so instead I'm just titling and sorting them as I download them (since you can apparently only download one book at a time, this isn't too big of an issue).

So I'm pretty pleased with the service.

it's called 1dollarscan.com if you're curious and want to give it a run.

Really the only issue I had was the wait to get these back, but it'll also keep me from just going nuts and splurging.  A package a month seems about right.

The only thing that would make it better is if it was local so I don't have to keep mailing sh*t... that's gonna get laborious.  But I filled a box and it made a rather sizable dent in my archives, I'm happy to say.  Combine that with donating the books I no longer want to the library or a re-sale store... things are lookin' up (in an ideal world, the resale of what I don't want would balance out the cost of saving what I do want, but that's exceedingly unlikely).

So one of the last books I sent to the service couldn't scan because it's McGraw-Hill, so I had it sent back.  But included with the book was an apology origami crane, which I thought was a nice touch... as well as evidence that they have a replicant on staff.

Yeah, nothing by McGraw-Hill.  Which is the reason I had them send it back, I wanted to see what the tell was... and it's a tiny little red logo on the spine, very easy to miss... I'll keep an eye out for that in the future.  Now, to put together a new bundle to send.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but 1dollarscan is celebrating their 5-year anniversary with a buy one get one free special, up to 100 sets worth.  That's going to knock out quite some space on my shelves.  It took me a little while, but I was able to fit 100 sets into two boxes.  I placed the bigger order a couple minutes ago.  I'm not sure how I get the coupons, but when I do, I'll send the second one.  Of course, the coupons have to be used within the next two months.  Gonna be sending out a LOT of books this fall.