1DollarScan, the increasingly popular service provider who will create digital editions of print materials for its users at both a high turnover rate and an accessible price point, announced that it is going to be showcasing its platform at an upcoming Japanese culture event in San Francisco next month. At the February 9th and 10th Visit Japan Event in Union Square, 1DollarScan will be exhibiting its service that has roots in Japanese reading practice.
The concept that the company will be showcasing is known in Japan as jisui, in which consumers were resorting to cutting and scanning their own previously purchased print books in order to be able to convert that file for use on their devices. 1DollarScan recently unveiled two new features that allow US consumers to take advantage of the process. The first allowed consumers to purchase a print-only book or out-of-print book and have it shipped directly to 1DollarScan, who would then digitize it for the user and destroy the print book, ensuring that the consumer still only had access to the single purchased copy. The other new feature was a subscription model for companies or users who had a high-volume of content that had to be digitized, making it more affordable on a larger scale; this model also included features such as digitizing back issues of print magazines, an Express Service for those platinum members, and more.
Jisui, a Japanese concept that literally translates as “cooking one’s own meals,” has grown into a buzzword overseas for the process of scanning a book in order to be able to read it on a dedicated e-reader. This process met the need for Japanese language ebooks at a time when most e-readers weren’t able to handle the right-to-left and vertical reading format of the language. This issue has been addressed by ePub3, and with wider adoption hopefully more Japanese language ebooks will become more readily available.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
