Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, Google
Google to Offer Free Novels
Google is planning to offer Google Book Search users the ability to download and print selected classic out of copyright novels as PDF files for free. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt says he believes that this project will introduce many people to books that they would never have normally discovered. The free novel program started life as Google's giant initiative to put books online in a searchable format. Through an outside project known as Gutenberg, volunteers have been scanning public domain books for many years to text files that can in turn be used for printing or reading. Google is acquiring this information, and will allow users to access these books in a print ready format.
UPDATE: To find out-of-copyright books that you can download, select the "Full view" radio button when you search on books.google.com
Current available titles include:
- Ferriar's The Bibliomania
- A futurist from 1881's 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century
- Aesop's Fables
- Shakespeare's Hamlet
- Abbott's Flatland
- Hugo's Marion De Lorme
- Dunant's Eine Erinnerung an Solferino
- Bolívar's Proclamas
- Dante's Inferno
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Qwfwq said 1:17PM on 8-30-2006
Over 19000 free ebooks can already be ready freom Project Guttenberg's site - this is a wonderful project and Google's initiative to integrate this catalog with Google Book Search will make it available to a much wider audience. Now what is missing is a good (an not too expensive) ebook reader that can be carried around as my computer monitor is not ideal and neither is the notebook (perhaps a tablet pc if it had good autonomy).
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Duane said 2:37PM on 8-30-2006
Just to clarify, "novels" has nothing to do with it, it's works that have fallen out of copyright in any form. Right now, for instance, I'm reading a geneology of William Shakespeare.
Is Google's project even related to Gutenberg? Gutenberg offers text versions of the books which may then be turned back into ebook or PDF format for ease of reading. Google is doing actual image scans of everything, front matter, margin notes, the works.
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Qwfwq said 3:10PM on 8-30-2006
@Duane
I believe you are right, I went and read the linked BBC news story (which is very vague) and there's no reference to a connection between Project Guttenberg and Google Book Search. There were some talks between Project Gutenberg and Google sometime before the launch of Google Print (now Google Book Search) in late 2004, but apparently their visions didn't coincide and Google backed down.
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Chris Gilmer said 3:26PM on 8-30-2006
Gutenberg is a separate project, that is not affiliated with Google. Google will be just working with Gutenberg to get the information from them for the Book project.
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resource said 3:33PM on 8-30-2006
Where can I find a list of all the books available to download?
It's not on the site.
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