Show HN: Ptrfy, simple textbook digitization | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Ptrfy, simple textbook digitization

ptrfy.com

2 pointsbreathesalt4 comments

Apart from the flat rate how are you different from http://1dollarscan.com or http://www.bookscan.co.jp ?

You indicate that you only support PDF for now, do you plan to support other formats? If so, how will you handle previous orders like if I pay for a scan now, can I hope to obtain a MOBI version for my Kindle when you offer it?

I love the ability to order from Amazon and deliver it to you.

The price kinds of puts me of a bit, 12$ seems ok if I have for example a technical book but for a novel it seems really too high.

First, thank you for the feedback; your comment about Amazon was very validating. The pricing model and payment mode (Gumroad) encapsulate and foreshadow a lot about what Ptrfy is focusing on. At $12, we're clearly not going to "Make Everything Digital For All Book Lovers" (1dollarscan's slogan), but we do want to make buying eTextbooks more simple, affordable, and social for those who need them the most, such as college students and technical professionals. We will be experimenting with different formats in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath, especially if it meant we would have to compete against Amazon. I'll have to think more about how much of a priority offerring PDF-to-X conversions for past customers is, so good question. PDFs are well-suited for use on desktop OSes, which is where many if not most technical professionals and students do their eTextbook reading. Nonetheless, iPads and Android tablets handle PDFs well enough, but rarely do I read technical literature other than mathematics on my iPad, because tablets are much better suited for casual mathematics notes.

I agree with you on ease to read on iPad/tablet. But for programming stuff I read a lot on my Kindle when I'm on the move or when I'm tired to sit in front of my computer screen and even if it opens PDF the rendering is never as good as the MOBI version. But I can understand it not being a priority for now.

One other concern : If someone buys a book, you digitalize it and destroy it in the process. Now if someone else order the same book a week later, do you digitalize it again or do you detect it's already been digitalized before and send the previous version. The latter seems more efficient (but maybe not legal?) but the former kind of allow you to keep/resell the version bought previously (which must not be legal from what I understood on your FAQ?).

Legally, we cannot keep files indefinitely. We do hold on to a file and its corresponding book material for two weeks after it has been processed for QA reasons, among others. This rules out file reuse for us.

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