Transferring to Kindle OCR? Scan? Or what way?

Hi bookies: I am now reading on a kindle paperwhite. It is a lot easier on my eyes than any other reading device and I can read anywhere in any light situation.

Kindle allows you to email word documents to the kindle and they show up on the kindle. For example, when I have long emails or other computer web sites to read, I copy and paste them into a word document and send it to kindle.

So, I have all these old books that are not kindle electronic versions. There is no kindle versions of those books.

Have any of you scanned books and turned them into word docs? I was thinking I can do this and make my own kindle books.

Have any of you ever done this before?

thx!