Recently a friend of mine wanted to read the book "Faith on the March". I had read it years ago and told him about it and he thought it would be an interesting read. I searched the Internet and the cheapest copy I found was $35.00, the price went as high as $300.00. At that point I grew disappointed and sick at the profit margin being made. Since I have published three books I know that even at $35.00 that seller was making a considerable profit. Now there is nothing wrong with making a profit in America, but considering the nature and subject matter of the book....it turned my stomach. I did some research and learned that the copyright had expired and was now public domain, so that means an even larger profit margin. I also learned that both of Marley Cole's books were in the same state, copyright expired and public domain. I then set out to find the PDF versions of all three, which I did. Now I was ready to republish them and set the price as low as the printer would allow.
"Faith on the March" was to be the test book. I created a beautiful cover and uploaded the PDF file. BAM! Rejected. Not due to copyright but alas due to font. The book had been scanned as jpg files then converted into a PDF, the very very old style font was not in the catalog of fonts used by my printer. ARG! What to do. I dare not retype it, way too big of a chance for errors. I gave it some thought and tried to export the PDF as a text file, nnnoooooo. Again the font. Turns out the book uses 4 different fonts, and my computer and Tab don't have 3. Looked on the Internet, not all fonts found.
Again I went to my thinking room in my mind. In the end here is what I am doing.
1) I am using a 6x4 book layout (the original was standard size) and already have an ISBN issued.
2) I recreated the title page, copyright page and content pages nearly 100% in the exact same layout.
3) Now for chapters. This is proving a more timely act. In order to capture the same layout I have to do it paragraph x paragraph. I highlight a paragraph, copy it, paste it into notepad to remove the formatting & font. Highlight again cut and paste into the Word book document. However not all words make it normal. Because of missing font information some words come out like " the hvoiise stoudd" well you get it. So then I do a line x line word x word comparison to ensure the exact same wording is transferred.
4) Then after each chapter I have to read each chapter again to ensure it all came out okay.
Time consuming but very enjoyable project.
My only problem so far, Word is flagging the messed up words. Okay not a problem you say. Well in writing a book even A.H. MacMillan made typos. Word is flagging them and I am correcting them. So this copy of "Faith on the March" will have corrected Mac's typo's.
I intend to do the same to Cole's books, not sure how long entire project will take. I hope that by doing this that if someone wants to buy them as history books they can find copies they can afford and not have to pay up to $300.00 for them.
"Faith on the March" was to be the test book. I created a beautiful cover and uploaded the PDF file. BAM! Rejected. Not due to copyright but alas due to font. The book had been scanned as jpg files then converted into a PDF, the very very old style font was not in the catalog of fonts used by my printer. ARG! What to do. I dare not retype it, way too big of a chance for errors. I gave it some thought and tried to export the PDF as a text file, nnnoooooo. Again the font. Turns out the book uses 4 different fonts, and my computer and Tab don't have 3. Looked on the Internet, not all fonts found.
Again I went to my thinking room in my mind. In the end here is what I am doing.
1) I am using a 6x4 book layout (the original was standard size) and already have an ISBN issued.
2) I recreated the title page, copyright page and content pages nearly 100% in the exact same layout.
3) Now for chapters. This is proving a more timely act. In order to capture the same layout I have to do it paragraph x paragraph. I highlight a paragraph, copy it, paste it into notepad to remove the formatting & font. Highlight again cut and paste into the Word book document. However not all words make it normal. Because of missing font information some words come out like " the hvoiise stoudd" well you get it. So then I do a line x line word x word comparison to ensure the exact same wording is transferred.
4) Then after each chapter I have to read each chapter again to ensure it all came out okay.
Time consuming but very enjoyable project.
My only problem so far, Word is flagging the messed up words. Okay not a problem you say. Well in writing a book even A.H. MacMillan made typos. Word is flagging them and I am correcting them. So this copy of "Faith on the March" will have corrected Mac's typo's.
I intend to do the same to Cole's books, not sure how long entire project will take. I hope that by doing this that if someone wants to buy them as history books they can find copies they can afford and not have to pay up to $300.00 for them.
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