Joe Kissell’s new “Take Control of Your Paperless Office” offers a guide for replacing printed documents with digital versions that can save space, reduce clutter, and increase efficiency. The 118-page ebook costs US$10, and it is available now at http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/paperless-office

The book, which is available only in electronic form to avoid excessive irony, helps readers develop their personal clean-up strategies and pick the proper tools to use with their Macs, such as scanners and OCR (optical character recognition) software, devices and services for storing digitized documents, and applications that help categorize, locate, and display digital document collections.

Kissell describes how to convert paper documents into digitized files and offers ideas for how to organize an office workflow, with suggestions for developing day-to-day techniques that reduce the amount of time spent pressing buttons, launching software, and otherwise managing the
war on clutter. In addition to all of the above, “Take Control of Your Paperless Office” clues readers in to these paper-reducing tasks and skills:

° How to scan or photograph documents while out and about business cards, receipts, menus, flyers, and labels so that you keep only digitized versions. The ebook discusses a variety of mobile scanner options, with particular emphasis on using a camera-equipped iOS device, and it lists similar options for employing Android and BlackBerry smartphones.

° How to create a digitized image of your signature so that you can create, sign, and share documents digitally, rather than printing them for the sole purpose of signing them with a pen.

° How to set up a computer to send and receive faxes so that you can avoid using a physical fax machine with paper input and output. Kissell describes both using a fax modem and taking advantage of various online fax services.

° How to use common techniques for reducing paper — paperless billing, online bank statements, and more — and less common practices, such as using paperless postal mail services and check depositing services. Kissell also gives effective tips for reducing the amount of catalogs, junk mail, and paper that you receive.