Scanning, printing and downloading services from Kirtas
By Paul Biba
Kirtas is a maker of automatic book imaging systems. They also have a POD service that is open to the general public. I poked around their book site after getting an email from them and here’s what I found.
Take, for example, the book A catalogue of English and foreign bookbindings offered for sale by Bernard Quaritch Ltd.. I can download it for free, get a softcover version for $8 or a hardcover version for $18. I can also preview how the POD cover will look (pictured above). They have books from the Rochester Institute of Technology (654), Kirtas Classics (99,799), University of Pennsylvania (224,199), McGill University (37,921), New York Public Library (317,934) and others.
You might want to poke around. The only problem is that the digitized copies are in PDF format, which means that I certainly will never download one. I don’t like reading on the computer and there isn’t a good portable alternative for PDF reading yet. However, the prices are pretty reasonable I can certainly see ordering a hard cover book or maybe finding an unusual book and having it printed to use as a Christmas gift.
November 20th, 2009 at 11:30 am
[Please delete (or ignore) the previous comment – I don’t know how, I submitted it before finishing to write it – thanks!]
I’ve tried their service, asking them to digitize for me “Cyclopedia of wonders and curiosities of nature and art, science” (on Oct 8, 2009) – they took the money, and I had very little feedback since then.
The order status page (which shows an improved interface since last time I checked) tells me the order has been “accepted”, yet it’s still not been digitized, printed or shipped.
On the other hand, a pdf version of the book has appeared on the book page:
http://kirtasbooks.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&product_id=645846&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=3&redirected=1&Itemid=3
I’m not sure it’s complete yet – the book looks cool anyway. Anyway, it seems the digitization request worked.
I’ll let you know when/if I receive the printed copy (note: while digitization and printing are quite cheap, shipping costs to Italy were pretty steep – I paid more for those than for the book.)
November 20th, 2009 at 11:51 am
I will be the first to admit that PDF conversion to the Kindle format is not perfect, but to say it is no good is to understate it. For simple in line text only novels, it is fine. I cannot tell the difference. On the other hand a book with columns, tables, etc is an unmitigated disaster. So I rank PDF as good but not great and good but not unusable, sort of in the middle.