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Google opens EPUB public domain collection to public
August 26, 2009 | 4:04 pm
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By Paul Biba
Previously the EPUB versions were available through Sony, now, however, they will be available to anyone. This is from their blog:
… starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don’t readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we’ve scanned. EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or “reflow”) to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won’t be tied to or locked into a particular device. We’ll also continue to make available these books in the popular PDF format so you can see images of the pages just as they appear in the printed book.
To get started, just find any public domain book on Google Books and click on the Download button in the toolbar.
According to ReadWriteWeb the EPUB versions are not proofread and contain “quite a few mistakes in most books”.
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Comments:
Yo, Amazon — get on this. Jeff Bezos is already on record saying he views the Kindle device and Kindle-formatted ebooks as separate businesses and that he’s open to allowing other formats on the Kindle. Bezos mouth, meet Bezos money. Do the right thing and put epub on the Kindle.
You folks really want Amazon to dominate the nascent ebook business, eh?
If Amazon starts supporting drm-free epub, it pretty much takes away the last reason *not* to buy Kindle…
>;)
Don’t bother!
Google’s One Million eBooks Of Crap!
http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/2009/08/googles-one-million-ebooks-of-crap.html
Aaron, Felix and Mike:
Aaron: Excellent point, made here earlier. It is hardly impossible to envision Amazon doing ePub and using the MP3 Store strategy.
Felix: Hey, I’ve handed Jeff the game plan, lol. Just do a DRM-free ePub store. It is dangerous, dangerous for Adobe and others to build a coalition around DRM–I couldn’t agree more. Of course, I want everyone to back away from traditional DRM, and if Amazon drops it, the rest will have no choice. I doubt that B&N and the others are just going to ride off into the sunset, and then maybe people can focus more on books and less on dumb things like proprietary formats.
Mike: Yes, the quality sucks, but far better to be reading stuff I only dreamed about seeing. Sooner or later the quality of the more popular titles will catch up.
Thanks,
David
Good point, Mr Rothman, about the quality improving.
Unlike the google image file pdfs, the epub files *can* be proofread, converted to other formats, and redistributed. It may take a few decades but at some point we’ll end up with a good library of PD books.
Half-full glass time, huh?
@Felix: Even with Amazon supporting DRM-free ePub there are still plenty of reasons not to buy a Kindle or from Amazon.
Mind the smilies, people…
Quem quiser baixar e-books gratuitos de autores clássicos de nossa literatura, existe o site Brasil ePub ( http://www.brasilepub.com.br/ ). Os arquivos estão em formato ePub, ideal para serem lidos no PC, iPad ou no iPhone.