Great news for readers as Google launched its web store called Google eBooks for digital books. It claims to have a library of over 3 million books and includes a lot of free books. Although the books are for the US, as per a blog by Google, the free ones can be read by everyone. It’s designed to be usable from all possible devices through various applications or a web version.
EBook readers like Kindle and Nook can also be used to access these books. It doesn’t have any application for iPad but a web version is enough for this platform. It has Android and iPhone applications. Apart from being available at the bookstore titles can be purchased from Google’s partners like Powell’s, Alibris , members of the American Booksellers Association.
The applications enable an automatic bookmark that lets the reader come back to the page they were reading after before the pause, not only this, you can also contemporize the books with hand-held gadgets for on-the-go reading. When you open your account there are 3 books available as default books. They may be- Alice’s adventures in wonderland, the Modern Prometheus, Great Expectations, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice.
It has features that let you edit its font, size, spacing and justification. There is good news for students and the like, this application provides a scanned version of the books that’s helpful for citation (something not there in Kindle). Tough it’s not very sophisticated in the sense that it doesn’t have a HTML5 version, but it’s a fairly good web reader. TechCrunch’s Eric Schonfeld complains that pages can not be shared but I think that is up to the publisher since it involves copyright issues. Also the search window is not really useful since it doesn’t filter your request much but something has to be left for the future.
Google eBooks’ fate depends on whether through its publishers it can fill the virtual shelf with good quality. Speaking in far futute, authors may even consider ditching the publishers and maintain a direct contact with Google. 🙂
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