Scan/OCR book pages to text file vs. retyping?

[marlene]

One of my clients has two old books they need to reprint, but they don't have the original text files. The books are short -- one is about 20 pages, the other about 40 -- but nobody wants to retype them.

Does anyone know of a service bureau that can scan the pages (the books are saddle-stitched and could be easily cut into single pages), run the scans through an OCR program, clean up the text and provide a clean text file?

I'm also asking around to see if anyone wants to just retype them. I don't know the going rates either for typing or for scanning/OCR'ing, so I'm not sure which would be the most cost-effective.

FWIW, pages are 8.5 x 11, text is one column (margins are enormous so the line width is not too horrendously wide) and large (looks like 12 point Times Roman). The books are probably good candidates for scanning, as well as being retyped.

Suggestions?

mxh