New to Forums and Making E-Books

[taxi12]

Hi, I'm new to forums and to (trying) to make ebooks from books. I must say that I'm having quite a difficult time of it and thus decided to join this forum in the hopes that all you more advanced and experienced people might be able to help me out!

When I download books, I am amazed at all the formats that people have been able to put them in and upload them to the web. I understand converting file formats in Calibre and rely on this program for that and for maintaing my library. I also use th Barnes and Noble Nook for my e-reader.

My quandry arises as I try to actually make the ebooks themselves. You see, I want to cut down on the actual amount of stuff I have and books are a big part of that. I even bought a guillotine paper cutter so that I can cut off the spines of the books and feed them into an automatic document feeder due to my lack of patience to scan each page. I own a Neat Desk Scanner (which I haven't seen mentioned in the forums) also an HP Office Jet Pro L7700 series but would prefer if I can to use the Neat Desk Scanner as it will scan both sides of the page at the same time whereas the HP won't.

Now comes the confusing part for me. Getting the document into an ebook readable form. What comes out is a PDF though I think that I can convert it to a tiff or jpeg image. I've tried various converters like Free OCR, AVS Document Converter and Nuance but noe of these seem make what I think I'm looking for... not that I'm completely sure about that anyway. Finally, I've ordered Abbyy Finereader 10 and expect it sometime this week or next hoping that this is the answer to my dilema but I worry that I am still missing large parts of information. I began to think that my Neat Desk Scanner might be the problem but I'll have to determine that after I try the Abbyy software I suppose. I think that the Neat Desk Scanner is similiar to the Fujitsu Scanner though now reading through the forum and looking at the website it looks as though the Fujitsu ha more capability. I run Windows Vista on my laptop and some version of Windows XP Media Center on my desktop and prefer to use my laptop.

Well, that's about it... I'm surpised if you've made it this far with me... sorry for the length, but others have said to put in all these details if you really wanted help and I REALLY want some help.
Thanks to all who work hard on this forum.

[ImogenRose]

Hello and welcome to MR!

Imogen

[neilmarr]

Good to have your company, Taxi. You're more likely to get quick and more expert advice from experienced Nookers if you try your specific question in the
Nook-dedicated sub forum here. Luck and best wishes. Neil

[SandyHarper]

Welcome to the digital world. Various formats and ereaders is a problem that need to be addressed in the very near future. Ebooks is certainly the future.

[SandyHarper]

Originally Posted by taxi12

Hi, I'm new to forums and to (trying) to make ebooks from books. I must say that I'm having quite a difficult time of it and thus decided to join this forum in the hopes that all you more advanced and experienced people might be able to help me out!

The formatting is most frustrating for new and published authors. There are platforms like smashwords which provides instructions but it takes forever to get it right. There are books on publishing and marketing ebooks (I don't know if I am allowed to mention mine). Good luck!

[MickeyC]

Hi taxi12 and welcome to MobileRead