Google makes over a million public domain books available in EPUB format
By Donald Melanson 
posted Aug 26th 2009 5:34PM
posted Aug 26th 2009 5:34PM
The deal may have first been announced somewhat quietly last month, but now that Sony's come out with what's arguably its most attractive e-reader to date, the availability of over a million public domain books in the Sony-friendly EPUB format is sure to garner a fair bit more attention. As Google announced on its Inside Google Books blog, those books are now all available for download starting today and are, of course, completely free and able to be used on the EPUB-supporting device of your choice. The move also takes on a particular prominence in light of Google's recent fight with Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and the Open Book Alliance, who have taken issue with Google's settlement with book publishers and authors that would give it the right to digitize orphan works and make the now out-of-print (but non-public domain) books widely available.
No good for PRS-500 :(
Ah well I suppose it will make conversion in calibre better.
An E-Reader would be amazing if you got free books with it :D
http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/25/sony-announces-daily-edition-reader/
Or were you just joking?
i believe theres a sony e-reader with access to the google library so you should be able to view plenty of free books :)
Regardless of which Ebook reader you get, there are a lot of books to be had for free. Feedbooks has a ton of Public Domain books in a lot of formats. Then of course there's this deal with Google - I've heard you can also easily convert these to the Kindle format with a free app as well.
So, although you may not get free books with the reader itself, there's plenty of free reading material to be had without too much hassle.
On my HTC Hero (Android) I installed a free app called "Word Player" which is an excellent epube reader, and hundreds (or maybemore?) of free books are available for download directly from the app index /catalogue or fom Android market.
I just downloaded Sun Tzu Art of War and ranz Kafka's "The Trial" and sooner r later I'm pretty sure I'll find the time for reading themtoo.
@Matt, isn't that what this article is all about?
Also, I just finished a HSC trial exam, having to write an essay on Frankenstein. Weird.
Over a million? That's over 9,000 and a lot of e-pubes.
They are public domain for the same reason Netflix offers free movie streaming....the vast majority of them suck.
@ Patrick: Netflix does not offer free movie streaming.
They are public domain because time has passed since the author has died. Just because they're old doesn't mean they suck.
I don't think calling you a moron fully encapsulates the stupidity in your statement.
@Pat
How would you know they suck? The last book you read had pop-up animals in it!
Most of the public domain books are classics and very worthy of reading especially in light of these classics being omitted in our present educational system. Jules Verne, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens are all examples of authors whose books are available free. Check out feedbooks.com which has instructions for a variety of formats for many readers.
Yea because books like Alice in wonderland, Tom Sawyer, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Dracula just to name a couple are complete rubbish and should be burned.
Patrick, you are the reason the terrorists hate us.
To be fair to Patrick, not one of you has disproved the part of his statement where he said the vast majority of them suck. All you did was select an extremely small number of the rare gems that are available for free and did not address the content of the majority of the books offered.
That said, it was pretty dumb of Patrick to say that Netflix offers streaming video for free.
To be fair, he did say the 'vast majority' not 'all'.
The 'vast majority' of ALL media sucks.
For every good book, movie, song, or video game, there are easily over 10 that suck.
Wow, in the face kindle!
I wouldn't count out the Kindle just yet. Unlike Sony's new reader, the Kindle has a well-greased infrastructure for distributing paid content. There's no doubt that publishers will want to support a device that can make them money (Kindle) over a device that gets books for free (Sony). For instance, textbook publishers will want their books on the Kindle ecosystem because the DRM allows them to be able to reap profits while one might be able to download a textbook (perhaps from an illegal source) and just sideload it onto his Sony device.
Basically, consumers will want the Sony's device while content providers will want to push the Kindle. Unfortunately, we know the consumer doesn't always get what they want...
@TMPRIDE
Why would publishers embrace Amazon's locked-in system as this market develops. The whole point with Sony's E-book readers and EPUB is that its OPEN.
If I download a EPUB book I can use it on ANY platform. I don't need Amazon, I don't need Sony, or any one else.
Meaning that publishers & consumers aren't locked into Amazon, Sony, or any other manufacturer. They can set their own rules, and consumers can read their e-books on a Sony device, or a Plastic Logic, or any open device without any worries. Something you can't do with the Kindle.
Let's also not forget that the new Sony devices also includes a 3G distribution system like Amazons, and more importantly native support for PDF, .doc, rtf, files and removable media (SD & MS).
even if Kindle does not support EPUB in the near future (and I would be very surprised about that), you can still download books from google site in PDF format (not exactly the same, but not that bad books)
@ JimboJones
The main difference between PDF and EPUB is that EPUB is specifically designed for e-Books and is based on XML. Which means it handles font sizes and formatting very well. Many PDF files are poorly handles relative to the screen size of the Kindle; especially when converted to Amazon's proprietary AZW file format.
Either way, only the Kindle DX supports PDF without conversion. Atop that the DX doesn't support the PDF DRM which means a lot PDF files won't work (because Amazon wants to promote their own AZW DRM'd files). The Sony Reader supports both open-format EPUB as well as DRM'd PDF files.
@TMPRIDE
I wouldn't count out the appeal of being able to use multiple brands of reader at multiple book stores either.
Both devices support DRM. But Sony's is the same system as used by several other manufacturers. Amazon's is exclusive to Amazon, and will remain so.
ePub is already a commonly available format. Amazon's is a modified Mobi file that can only be got from Amazon.
"Kindle, meet your long lost older brother, Betamax. Betamax, meet Kindle..."
Nice to meet you Kindle!
yeah except Kindle supports PDF and all free books are available in PDF format
>>"yeah except Kindle supports PDF and all free books are available in PDF format"
No, it doesn't. PDF isn't natively supported in the Kindle 2, and the Kindle DX's PDF support is spotty at best.
I planned on using the Kindle DX for a lot of technical documents I utilize for work- almost none of the PDF files I purchase of the white papers and scientific literature can be read in my DX. It can be read in my ol' Sony reader that I've purchased years ago, but its still poorly formatted with a smaller screen.
PDF support in the Kindle is laughable at best.
@JimboJones
You haven't used an e-book reader yet I assume. Otherwise you wouldn't be making such a statement.
PDF is a great format when you play to it's strengths. But it is not an e-book format. E-book readers right now are not good at zooming, and can't pan. PDFs on all current readers are horrible.
ePub, Mobi, even formats like DOC, HTML, TXT etc.. are all far better for e-books. Change the font size and you may as well forget about page layout, because it doesn't work with e-books.
If you want to read PDF files, get a netbook or a laptop. It does that job much better. If you want to use an e-book reader, get proper e-book format files for it, and you will be a happy user.
I can't fathom why anyone would be opposed to this. Perhaps the government should fund a similar program for libraries (just so people couldn't say Google was trying to own the world's book supply...).
I actually read an article about this the other day and it's kind of a strange issue.
The books people are up in arms about are not the ones which have passed into public domain. They are the "orphaned" books, in other words the rights holder has passed away and the person who was granted the rights upon their death has not claimed the rights, was not named explicitly, they don't know who it is or how to contact them, etc. That's of course not the only scenario, but the most common one.
So, since the work is not public domain, and supposedly someone out there owns the rights to it, but has not been identified or is not contact-able, it's considered "orphaned". And Google has struck a deal with the publishers that basically grants them the rights to publish those works electronically.
"able to be used on the EPUB-supporting device of your choice"
Ahhh...now i understand
google books may offer a lot of free public domain books, but most of them have really bad formatting, typos, and other errors because they were probably quickly scanned by a machine and converted to text by an OCR system with little to no human proofreading.
google has a big name, but their public domain books are marginal at best. i'll stick to something like feedbooks or project gutenberg (not perfect, but decent) for my public domain epubs until google improves the quality of it's books. we don't need 20 versions of Pride and Prejudice, just 1 free one with correct formatting and no errors.
Thank You Google & SONY
The Sony Reader is amazing. Just found out you can use Shortcovers eBooks on it as well.
Super easy process!
http://bit.ly/FsI77