Seeking Guidance RE Digitizing of Old Book

[Ofnuts]

Yes, more readable.

Since the color balance isn't perfect, you get a yellow cast when you push contrast, so you should transform the image to black and white (Color>Desaturate).

Otherwise, a better technique

1. Desaturate the image (Color>Desaturate)
   
2. Use the color picker to set the background color from an area on the page (typically, a margin)
   
3. Decompose the image use Filters>Enhance>Wavelet decompose. The Residual layer at the bottom shows the non-uniform lighting of the page
   
4. Bucket-fill that Residual with the color you sampled at step 2)
   
5. You can increase the sharpness of the characters by duplicating the top layer(s) (Scale 1, Scale 2). At that point adding contrast may be unnecessary.
   
6. If you want to add contrast, create a layer with Layer>New from visible and drag it to the top (you can also use Image>Flatten image) and work on that., but you'll need much less contrast.