Status: 1/473 Articles
This is where I will be placing all JLS EPUBs. The ultimate goal will be to convert JLS into EPUB just like the Libertarian Forum.
This is a HUGE undertaking. The entire journal is 8495 pages of articles over 31 years. The Journal of Libertarian Studies is ~3.7 million words, while the Libertarian Forum is a mere 1.3 million words.
In the end, I believe each Volume will get its own EPUB (an all encompassing one such as the Libertarian Forum I believe would be too large). Although the way I will build them will make it very easy to combine at a future date if need be.
These will slowly be chipped away over time while I have nothing better to do or if someone requests an article. :P
Volume 15.1.1: Monarchy and War: http://www.mediafire.com/?cjo48qqbrm98tdv
Thanks to Sergio for requesting an EPUB of Volume 15.1.1 of JLS.
Wow! This look excellent. I tried to create my own epub of this same article but it was becoming difficult with the footnotes and i am not familiar with adobe indesign. What program do you use to create these wonderful epub's from pdf's? I got a few books i want to scan and create epub's out of them so im trying to familiarize myself with adobe indesign.
ReplyDeleteWell thanks again for what you do and i hope the best in your quest to convert JLS into epub format.
PEACE & FREEDOOM
>> Wow! This look excellent.
DeleteThank you. I didn't do very thorough spell checking or fix of hyphenation issues yet (it seems like Volume 15 has some REALLY bad hyphenation). I feel that those steps will be better suited on some mass scale where they may be multiple of the same errors throughout a Volume.
>> What program do you use to create these wonderful epub's from pdf's?
I would recommend using proper OCR programs. Here is a list of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OCR_software
When I started getting into this, the recommended programs I remember were Tesseract (free, commandline), ReadIris (I did not like this one), and Finereader (I settled on this)... I tried a few of the others but they were not good for me (perhaps things are different now). I haven't looked at any other OCR programs since I settled on Finereader.
I now use ABBYY Finereader 11:
http://finereader.abbyy.com/professional/
It saves a lot of time because it highlights potentially wrong characters in blue, and I can quickly do a side by side comparison and fix mistakes if need be (plus it is VERY accurate already).
After a lot of side by side error correction, I then export as EPUB (added in 11), and continue doing work from there in Sigil. (Finereader tries to split chapters and place footnotes at the end of each chapter, but the footnotes most likely becomes very broken and take a massive amount of work to fix).
I then go through the PDF one page at a time, and make sure to search the EPUB for the footnotes and place them in the proper chapter/order (and make sure they exported correctly into the EPUB... sometimes Finereader magically just forgets to export them).
I then do a lot more passes adding/fixing more things in each pass. Then a few spell checking passes, and the final testing/scan through on the device (Nook). I catch a few more errors, and then I finalize it and put it up on the site.
>> I got a few books i want to scan and create epub's out of them so im trying to familiarize myself with adobe indesign.
InDesign is more for creating a final document (such as a hardcopy/print book or a nice looking PDF). Because ebooks are becoming more and more of the book market, they decided to stick EPUB export as an "add-on" afterthought.
I read the forums on MobileRead every day and just absorb knowledge there as well:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/
You're doing all that alone?
ReplyDeleteIt is noted that you are insane. Keep it up! :D
Well I like to imagine when I get more people under my command that I will be able to take more advantage of the division of labor! Someone else can then take care of the boring stuff while I get some REAL work done! :P
DeleteI have been meaning to create a program to try to automate a lot of the more monotonous clean up of Finereader's output, and also have it point out/fix common errors... In the long run the cleaning program would be a much more productive use of my time. And save a lot more man hours.
I already created a footnoting program to really help renumber and link all of the footnotes throughout the book (one of the final steps). It saves me a nice chunk of time per book, as that was one of the more annoying parts of Finereader's auto-footnotes.
>> You're doing all that alone?
It is pretty much just me being so productive and slowly taking over the EPUB creation at Mises. After having a look at what some of these conversion houses do... I can release a much higher quality and more optimized EPUB. DOWN WITH THE BLOAT! :)
There are a lot more steps than what I stated up there. I have been meaning to type up a post explaining the steps in detail, but I keep getting distracted with more books.
The two articles I have been meaning to write have been:
1. My Workflow (all of the steps I take from Finereader -> Cleaning (Optional) -> Editing -> EPUB or PDF (Optional)). Perhaps a multi-part article where each part can go into detail about the step.
2. A gathering of great Self-Publishing/Copyright articles I find around the internet (that get lost in the abyss because I read them and don't save them). :P
I'm sure looking forward to these two articles you mentioned below! Thanks for the tips on my earlier comment. I will implement these great tips into my own work and hopefully achieve some success with the books i want to scan then pdf and epub.
DeletePEACE & FREEDOM