Why do people prefer scanners for scanning books and not photograph them?

Have you ever tried to photograph a whole book? It's much harder than one would have thought - first, you need a well-lit place where the photo taking will take place. Then, you actually need something that would keep the book open, so it won't close when you are in the middle of taking picture. Then, you also need a good camera, or at least a phone with a good camera in it, otherwise the letters will be blurry and you will lose loads of time by re-taking every picture because you can't read it. And last but not least - editing pictures is a pain, especially if there is (for example) a hundred of them.

While scanner? Whoosh, scanning a really thick but is actually a cakewalk, compared to taking photos of it. You need a scanner and the book. You open the book, place it on the scanner, push a button, poof! The page is scanned, without needing light and extra set of hands. Not to mention that there are programs around that allow you to scan the page into a text document, which is a great help, if you need to further work with the text. I once scanned a book of 500 pages in about an hour (with breaks, of course, other people needed the scanner, too) - I do not even want to think how long it would take, if I were photographing it.

FROM: http://www.euask.com/topic/7280-Why-do-people-prefer-scanners-for-scanning-books-and-not-photograph-them