[NFB-Braille-Discussion] getting books brailled

[Josh Kennedy]

well let's see, in order to be a braille transcriber, it will cost you $4500 for a good professional and fast braille printer, another $50-$80 for the special braille paper, another eight or $900 for a professional braille translation software. and if you don't have a computer, it will cost you around another $450-$500 for a decent computer to run the software.
so an average print book in hardcopy braille will probably be seven or eight volumes long. And it would probably cost around seven or $800 to mitt to turn a print book into hardcopy braille if not more. Plus not to mention the annual or ongoing maintenance of the computer braille printer. yes and the transcriber will also probably want a sound enclosure for the braille printer because it is as loud as one of those industrial factory machines. So that would probably cost another two to $300. I tested a braille printer for American printing house a couple months ago. In the manual, it recommends if you're going to be using it for a long period of time, the printer is that loud they recommend you wear earplugs. 
I thought about buying a braille printer once, but then I figured since I'm in a rural area, and I wouldn't use it all that often it wouldn't be worth it. In the end I decided to just get an electric Perkins brailler instead. The electric Perkins Brailer pretty much has the same parts and the same metal build quality as the classic Perkins Braillers however, it uses electricity to do the embossing it has a very light key press, and you don't need to press the keys very hard at all, letting you braille a whole lot faster. because of the coronavirus, they don't have any in stock Perkins does not have any in stock so I had to buy one secondhand, and then I had to pay some extra money to send it back to Perkins and have it re-conditioned and cleaned and made like a brand new Brailer. But the electric Perkins brailler should last me 60 or so years so it should last me the rest of my life. The electric Perkins brailler is quite a bit louder than a standard brailler, but again the nice thing is I can write braille a lot faster with it. and it is a whole lot affordable is much much more affordable than one of those $4500-$5000 computer braille printers. I also have a bunch of leftover tractor feed paper around here that I did use to test with the braille printer when I had it to test out a couple months ago. So all I have to do is take the paper apart, and tear off the tractor strips on the side, and then I can use it in my electric Perkins brailler as regular braille paper. And it works quite well.