Earlier today, I read a post on Teleread.org about Blue Leaf, a company that will scan your book and send you a searchable PDF file. The service costs about 4 cents per page, plus a flat $15 fee to cover operating costs and return shipping.

I immediately wondered whether this was the answer I’ve been looking for to convert the small collection of books I have that aren’t available digitally. I’m too lazy to do all the book scanning by hand, as I suspect most readers are, so these books have remained on my To Do list for years now.

An affordable way to convert a personal library? MAYBE.

I decided to try out the service on an out-of-print book that the publisher has yet to make available as a digital file; in fact, it was never even published in the United States. I bought it from Amazon UK back in 1997, and physical copies of it now go for $50 or more on various websites. It’s listed on the Google Books site, but of course you can’t preview it or purchase it digitally there because so many authors and publishers don’t want Google to sell their books.

I deliberately picked a book that’s written in English but uses lots of accented characters and foreign names (it’s about Hungarian history), and that has photographic inserts, a bibliography, and an index. As soon as it’s returned, I’ll post a follow up about how well the service worked.

There are three things I realized as I clicked the button to proceed with the order, and I think they may impact how useful Blue Leaf can be for readers who want to convert their private libraries:

1. It’s emotionally hard to send off a physical book. I’m not a fan in any way of physical books, and yet I felt a twinge of fear as I slid my book into a padded envelope to ship to Connecticut. What if it gets lost? What if I never see it again? What if it’s returned in pieces? I know it’s irrational, but it’s what I felt.
2. I’m not sure I’m brave/foolish enough to try the service on the few books I do consider precious. I have an oral history of one of the few survivors of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978. I would love to have a digital copy, but I’m not sure I would ever be able to willingly part with my copy. Even with postal insurance, I don’t know that I’d be able to replace it if it went missing. I’ll probably have to scan this by hand myself or never do it at all.
3. It’s just too expensive to convert an entire library. To convert the <300 page book I chose, the total cost was just under $28, not counting the extra $5 or so I'll spend on shipping supplies and fees. I'm going to end up paying about $33 for a digital copy of this book. I have another one I wanted to try, but at 400 pages it became too expensive for my test. One could argue that if you value your free time at more than a few bucks an hour, Blue Leaf still works out to be far cheaper than doing it yourself. On the other hand, you can just leave those books alone and hope that someday they'll be made available in the marketplace

Realistically speaking, unless you’ve got a big pile of cash, Blue Leaf is best for special editions you just have to have in digital format.

An affordable way for authors to convert their own out-of-print works! YES.

The real beauty of the service may be for authors. David Rothman on Teleread noted that Blue Leaf offers an incredibly cheap way for individual authors to convert their own out-of-print titles into digital formats.

This could be a helluva a deal for individuals and small publishers. Talk about the potential for getting back lists into E and POD!

An average book would cost someone around $30-50 to convert into a basic PDF or Word doc that you can then adapt into various ebook formats. If you’re really anti-DIY, you can even pay Blue Leaf extra for them to create the device formats for you. (Note however that to get all the formats delivered on CD, plus an audio version using technology similar to Amazon’s text-to-speech functionality on the Kindle, you’ll be paying closer to $100.)

In fact, I hope the author of the book I’ve sent in for conversion takes note, and converts his book on his own for digital distribution. I’m sure services like Blue Leaf will continue to appear, and between those and various ebook retailers (yes, including Google Books), there’s no reason for any author’s older works to languish in “not for sell” exile.

[www.BlueLeaf-Book-Scanning.com via Teleread]

Here’s a guy who’s bypassed both vanity-presses and mainstream publishers by getting readers to pitch in and pay him directly for a book before he’s even written published it. Call it a reader-funded advance.

Robin Sloan is a blogger who previously published a short story, Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store, on the Kindle (you can buy it here for 99 cents). I stumbled across him on Kickstarter, a website where people can post ideas for projects and ask others around the world to sponsor them.

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Cory Doctorow, the sci-fi author and ebook pioneer (at least when it comes to DRM and pricing), announced this month in his new Publishers Weekly column that he’s about to embark on a bold publishing experiment. He says he’s going to publish his next book on his own, or at least without a publisher’s help, as he’ll be calling in favors from professionals to help with artwork, editing, and printing. He’s going to use all the unconventional distribution formats he’s now familiar with, and he’s going to make a profit.

Best of all for the rest of us, he says he will document the process and share the results, which means any writer or publisher curious about digital distribution will be able to benefit from whatever happens. I’m rooting for ya, Doctorow.

I also think it might be interesting to look at this experiment in the context of three other online distribution experiments.

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The New York Times has an interesting article today about a screenwriter who self-published a short story on the Amazon Kindle store. “The Variant” is a spy-thriller that John August first tested out with a small group assembled from his Twitter followers, then slightly revised, formatted for the Kindle, and is now selling for 99 cents.

He’s found modest success with the release, I’m assuming at least in part because he has 6,000 Twitter followers and is a known screenwriter with big-league movie credits to his name. But I’m sure it’s also because the story is entertaining and well-written. (I haven’t read it yet.)

As of Friday, “The Variant” was ranked No. 69 on Amazon’s list of most popular Kindle offerings, right behind “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult.

“I’ve made about enough to buy four Kindles,” said Mr. August.

I love this idea of accomplished, professional writers self-publishing at will, on a personal schedule independent of the sales cycles of the book industry. The manuscript moves directly from the writer to the reader. While I’m sure it won’t always be the best way to distribute new works, I think it’s fascinating and exciting to see it happening now in isolated instances like this.

Download a sample of “The Variant” to your Kindle or iPhone on the official Amazon page.