Google is adding a feature to its Google Books service today to allow PDF downloads of out-of-copyright books. For example, to download a pdf version of Dante’s Inferno, see the right sidebar of this page.
Until now, Google only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online (and only snippets of copyrighted works). To search the database of available full titles, go to books.google.com and click the “full view books” option when searching. This new move contradicts earlier statements by Google that scans of out-of-copyright books would not be made available for printing.
Many full view titles, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, don’t have the PDF option yet.
Project Gutenberg is already offering downloads of thousands of out-of-copyright books, although the formating is inconsistent and the interface is less than user friendly.
Very cool!!
It seems is US only…that sucks
Yes…US only…if you are outside US use their translate service and acts as a proxy http://www.goog...com/translate_t
Could be nice (for users, not editors) to have access to a list of these free pdf books.
Could be nice for people who don’t read a lot and don’t know what to search. Browsing free books could help, encourage people to read.
Google is definitely a company driven by freaking communists.
why us only? that’s rubbish.
I fail to see how this is “news”… Project Gutenberg has been doing this since the web became popular in the mid 1990s – and their site is nicely designed, easy to navigate, and even has spoken versions of books…
Its not true that the service is for US only. I am able to download the PDFs (from India).
The link that Michael has shared is somehow not showing the “Download” button. Click on “Back to search result” and you will be able to download the book.
You can get a list of other free eBooks here
The Internet Archive ( http://www.archive.org ) has championed this effort and has made incredible progress (with Project Gutenberg as one of its many partners) – it’s sad to see it overshadowed by Google’s attempts. Still, I guess some competition is good for the consumer.
You may also want to check out Bartleby, essentially the same thing as Project Gutenberg, but with a much better design. http://www.bartleby.com/
That’s sounds a little cool
Thanks for the info,Matt.
Historically, human beings have prospered due the sharing of intellectual properties. Thank you for sharing Google.
/*
Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don’t care as much about attractive sites and pretty design. */
~Tim Berners-Lee
Yes, yes…I am able to download the PDFs (I’m from Czech) too.
Looks like Google now have added the public libraries on their list of entities they want to dominate.
Hi,
Obviously Google is going to get big public relations points out of its recent announcement to offer a bunch of books for free download. I thought I’d let you know about our thoughts on the books that Google has produced. Nutshell: great idea, but we wonder if anyone is actually going to make good use of the books. If Google makes a few updates to the books they publish then we reckon readers will benefit greatly.
http://www.plan...le&gid=7376
When I click on download link i get
Not Found
The requested URL /sorry/?continue=http://books.google.com/books%3Fvid%3DLCCN16003547%26id%3DMmpPi9vAa4MC%26output%3Dpdf%26sig%3DiHHD_hRn91eiBJYaoaRwQ6pTAtc was not found on this server.
I can download it from india. Although the link in the blog does not work for me. A fresh search for “dante inferno” in “Full View Books” give me the page where i could find the Download button.
I wonder if there’s an option to browse all available ‘full-text’ books, instead of having to perform a search.
wow – this is great – i think. barnes and noble and the others just had a very bad morning.
i love hanging and barnes/borders, but will they be able to stick it out after Google continues to slam them? i wonder how much these free books made for the big boys? maybe not so much….
Wow… that is really interesting. I can see a few issues that might arise with this… might ruffle a few feathers if you know what I mean!
This is way over-hyped. There are already numerous other projects out there who are working to accomplish the same thing (although Google could trump them in terms of comprehensiveness, given their resources).
And to all those predicting that this will hurt barnes and noble or that google will now “dominate” public libraries, have you really spent much time reading books in PDF format, especially when you could get the hardcopy for cheap (or free)? Most of these books can be obtained inexpensively and maybe it’s just me, but I just can’t see myself reading Dante’s Inferno on my laptop. Hardcopy books aren’t going anywhere just yet.
I’ve been checking out google books for a while now. It’s still a good start, but so many books that were written over 50 years ago are still unfortunately in copyright
Who the hell wants to read The Inferno, stupid layers of hell, lol had to read that in a humanities class in college, Boring, and hard to understand the words with the style of the writing.
That was one horrible copy. In the pdf, you will see highlighting/undelining few places, you will see some folds and few places fonts are not clear.
If this is how, the books they digitize are going to be – I would stay away from it.
Well I have personally been able to find a lot of pdf ebooks all over the internet. Non-copyright books are not difficult to find at all.
On the contrary if google can take up an initiative to create an e-library for all users who can access books for a certain period of time without being able to make copies of it, then it would be grand!
I don’t like PDF as web format.
Ahh, goodbye University library.
That’s actually just an intro to Inferno that you’re linking to.. not Dante’s Inferno itself.
Does that include music books?
Realy good news.
Check out the ultimate google books downloader.
here -> http://praveenr.laneware.net/
email me
Laneware has stopped free hosting. Find the GoogleBooksDownloader in this new url.
For those who think this site is malware, take a hike people. I have over 15000 hits and counting. I agree this site is not for the average user, especially with the instructions.
I will work on that.
For the rest, enjoy this new link.
Thanks.
http://googlebo...r.blogspot.com/
This article is helpful.
http://mimishan...m-google-books/
I tried and it works perfectly.
I tried and it works perfectly.