If you’re an author previously published in print, especially a novelist predating the e-book era, one of the biggest hurdles (after getting back your publishing rights!) may well be figuring out how to get your prior books into e-book format. Unless you have your original manuscripts readily at hand and they are primed for conversion, or you really enjoy typing, it’s far more practical to have your print books OCR-scanned.
OCR stands for “optical character recognition” and it will save you hassle if you have your pre-printed books professionally scanned. Yes, it costs money. Yes, I know most scanners nowadays boast some OCR capability. If you don’t mind flipping and scanning pages one by one, and slapping/smooshing your poor books down on a platen a thousand times, be my guest.
Darby and I decided to pass on the do-it-yourself option, and hire out that kind of tedium.
Blue Leaf Book Scanning was the company Darby and I used after reading some other author reviews. We decided to give them a test run by sending one novel each and evaluating the results.
I’m pleased to report Blue Leaf exceeded my expectations. I didn’t pay extra to have the machine cleaned before scanning my book, or for any other frills they offer. I just got the basic destructive scan, which gave me a formatted Word doc, a plain Word doc, and a pdf. They offer additional services now like direct Kindle formatting, but I like to have hands-on at every stage. I knew I would be doing more editing before e-publishing anyway.
To be fair and to have a valid comparison, I have a scanner that claims it does OCR, so I did my novella that way. Blue Leaf will not scan partial books anyway. Well, let me tell you, I might as well retype the novella for all the errors from the home-job OCR. Personal scanners/software just aren’t anywhere near the accuracy level of commercial products.
After seeing the OCR results from our first books with Blue Leaf, and then my dismal home OCR attempt on the novella, Darby and I felt comfortable enough to send Blue Leaf the rest of our books. All our results were good. Two thumbs up.
Of course, even commercial scans aren’t 100 percent perfect. Certain characters or words seem more problematic than others. The hiccups tend to vary by book, but that is not unexpected, since even the same publishers use slightly larger/smaller or lighter/darker fonts in different books.
The results were satisfactory enough that I recommended Blue Leaf to several other author friends, who then also used them. (Hmm, surely I’m owed some kind of kickback for that!)
There was only one “hurdle,” which no longer seems to exist. Blue Leaf’s FAQ used to say they would not scan “trashy romance novels.” I puzzled and fretted over that one for a bit before I sent them anything. What was their definition of “trashy?” Were they labeling all romances as “trash,” or were they just judging books by their covers? Didn’t they know most authors had no say in covers with traditional publishers?
I decided to minimize risk by removing all my covers and just sending the guts of the books. They were processed without a hitch, so I guess that worked, or maybe there was never a real issue to begin with.
Interestingly enough, their FAQ no longer says anything about romance novels. I suspect they’ve noticed by now who is buttering the lion’s share of their bread.
If you decide to try Blue Leaf, take time to read through their FAQ, though, as there is important info there and also a code for a discount on their services.
I can imagine that this article on OCR Scanning will be most helpful to other authors. You and Darby are so unselfish in sharing your knowledge. And, as for “trashy romance novels” …. trashy is as trashy read. I have found nothing of that category in anything you and Darby write. In fact, I have not yet completely defined that definition.
Good luck to you.
Thanks, Jo. Your comments always brighten our day. I hope you are feeling better. Darby and I were worried about you. ~B
Thank you for this helpful review! I just happened to stumble upon it in my browsing. I have acually used Blue Leaf back in 2011 for a personal project of mine, and found the results to be exactly as you described; very accurate and professional (though, to be honest, I had low expectations when I placed the order, so my expectations were easily exceeded when I got the files). I also like how they provided many different versions of files for each book (low-res, hi-res, unformatted, formatted, etc.), so I could choose which file suited my needs most. So, thank you! Your review is right on target! (OH, also for those who do not know the link, here it is; http://www.blueleaf-book-scanning.com )
Thanks for your comment and for sharing your experience. Sounds like Blue Leaf is consistently accurate. I made that joke about a kickback in the post…well, coincidentally or not, a couple days after my review posted here I got a discount coupon from them in my email. I hadn’t gotten any before, so the timing seems somewhat suspect…:)