Dear Quaker Publishers, Ebooks Pretty please!

Dear Pendle Hill (and sundry other Quaker publishers)

 

Could you please consider distributing Pendle Hill Pamphlets in pdfs or some other kind of e-book format as well as on paper?

 

RantWoman's meeting is organizing the upcoming Quarterly Meeting. We want people to read a Pendle Hill pamphlet as part of their preparation. Even though the website is kind of clunky, according to even other people besides RantWoman, we think someone can figure out ordering printed copies.

 But RantWoman does not want more paper to scrape eyeballs over, with our without magnification options. No. RantWoman craves simplicity. RantWoman would most like to find a link for an electronic version, step through use of a credit card, click a final authorization, and send an electronic copy into a device and have the document read aloud to her AND / OR have some choices about text size if she decides she does want to look at some visual rendition of the text. RantWoman is aware of numerous moral ambivalences embodied in these preferences. Tough.

 

(RantWoman notes that various recorded reading options might also be on point. RantWoman does not want to have to invent that wheel though.)

 And instead, in case anyone thinks RantWoman’s life is not already full enough of vexation and opportunities to lurch along toward spiritual perfection, here is a brief outline of RantWoman’s efforts so far:

 I could order. Website is a pain. Someone else gets to do.

 It's in paper. I want to apply screen reader.

 Oh look a scanned version, in email, from someone who already has the pamphlet! Look, RantWoman is telling you she is WILLING to pay for content, but if the scanned version will do the trick…

 Download file from email.

 

Apply screen reader.

 

Open file. Learn that need spiffy new OCR function only available in most current upgrades of screen reader software.

 

Use screen reader to read screen reader program help files to figure out what keyboard encantations are needed to use new OCR Optical Character Recognition feature which RantWoman has not used very much.

 

Insert + SpaceBar O W

 

Read help files to figure out whether it is possible to select and copy text. Oops. Lost patience with that for now.

 

Try my own scan on devices in my office. But where are the drivers and such needed to OCR the output?

 

Print and scan on OCR combo printer

 Email images to self to see whether OCR happened..

 

Still no OCR. Back to getting it from the screen reader OCR. Sure. Not today. Unplug. Get a life. At least feed the cat.

 

Oh heck. Save printed pages in case RantWoman does decide actually to scrape eyeballs ofver paper and go nuts scribbling notes in sharpie on the back.

 

Or see how much RantWoman absorbs from everyone else’s digesting.

 

Or….

 Go feed the cat!