Debates: VERSUS?
Steve: If you were willing to take the time, you could scan your books at very little cost. There are also services that will scan your books for a dollar.
John: Sorry, but I just don't have the time to scan hundreds of pages myself, even if I had a fancy auto-feed scanner (which I don't). The services you mention are fine for books unavailable in ebook format, but even with prices like one dollar per 100 pages, the total cost, including shipping the original, is $8 or $9 — and all you get back are scanned PDF pages, not EPUB files. (I've written about my recent experience with one of these services in my blog: http://wp.me/pBNZg-1D.)
John Parsons (john@intuideas.com), former Editorial Director of The Seybold Report, is an independent writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He is the co-author of the interactive printed textbook, Introduction to Graphic Communication, on the art, science and business of print, which has been adopted by Ryerson, Arizona State, the University of Houston, and many other schools and vocational training centers. Custom editions of the book are under consideration by major printing companies and franchises for internal training purposes.