By Daniel Kalder

The idea behind 1dollarscan.com is simple: why not take all those old paper books or documents that are cluttering up your home, and send them to the firm’s offices in San Jose, where they’ll be scanned and turned into searchable PDF files? Rates start at $1 for 1-100 pages, which means that replacing a 200-page novel with a PDF file will cost a grand total of two bucks. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a replacement on Amazon, that’s for sure — and that’s if the book you are replacing is even available as an electronic file.

Hiroshi Nakano is CEO of zLibro, Inc., which operates the 1dollarscan service in San Jose. Originally launched as BOOKSCAN in Japan in April 2010, the American version of the service opened its doors on this side of the Pacific little over a year later:

“BOOKSCAN was extremely popular in Japan, so we decided to do the same process in the US. We launched 1dollarscan services in August 2011, so we have been open here for almost one year. Demand is growing, and soon there will be more.”

Indeed BOOKSCAN’s almost instant success in Japan was a business dream come true, and part of that was due to an influential IT blogger raving about the service on his site, which says Nakano, had a “huge impact.” Soon the firm had a four month backlog of people demanding to use services, and — perhaps the greatest measure of success — 100 competitors who had sprung up almost over night, like mushrooms after rain. But while an influential endorsement can create buzz, it doesn’t sustain a business long term.

“A large part of our success is that our pricing is very good for users. We charge 100 yen in Japan, or $1 in US, for a set of 100 pages. Nobody can do this kind of pricing model and get profitable, but we do. I believe we are the most affordable scanning service provider.”

Big In Japan

Housing conditions in Japan also help: people live in apartments where space is at a premium, and so a service that reduces the space consumption of books and documents is highly desirable. “Scanning also increases the mobility of books, which users like. Our PDFs can be read across many devices, like the iPad, iPhone, Kindle and so on.”

In the US by contrast, most people have a much greater amount of living and storage space, and so 1dollarscan’s development over here has not been quite as spectacular as the instant success of the parent company in Japan. Here, Nakano says “Space consumption is a big reason for using product but the main reasons are greater mobility and the search function. Once a book is scanned, the user can search for any keyword in any document or book. This is a great benefit for users, especially professors, students or researchers.”

Individuals Still Primary Audience

So who are 1dollarscan’s customers, individuals or institutions?

“So far in the US, the individual is the primary consumer. In the future however our target will be libraries or big enterprises — corporate users. However we do have some customers from publishers right now. They use our services to take old paper books, and then we scan them and create e-books which they put on the market.”

Following a period in Japan when demand was so huge that users might have to wait four months before receiving their scans, the average wait is now down to two months, while platinum membership guarantees a PDF will be in your inbox within 5-10 days. Currently in the US, all customers enjoy a platinum-style service, as all scans are guaranteed to be done within 10 business days.

1dollarscan uses industrial-level scanners, and during the process books are split open and destroyed, after which they are dispatched to be recycled. In Japan, Bookscan employs 200 staff, while in the US there is currently “about 20.” “In both countries half of the employees are operators who do the cutting and scanning. The other half are quality checkers. They inspect each page of a PDF file, and then there are two more approval processes after check. After that, we deliver to the customer.”