Disability Books and Publications

Free Download of Books from Google in EPUB Format

Google has announced that over a million out of copyright books in Google Books can now be downloaded in the open EPUB format making these public domain books more accessible. The EPUB format is supported by an increasing number of devices, including e-readers, netbooks and phones.

Google is making over one million public domain book titles available in epub format

Google has announced that over a million out of copyright books in the Google Books section can now be downloaded in the open EPUB format making these public domain books more accessible to all. The EPUB format is supported by an increasing number of devices, including e-readers, netbooks and phones.

Just recently, Sony made the announcement that the EPUB format will be supported by its upcoming Reader devices - the Pocked Edition, the Touch Edition and the Daily Edition. Google Book users can now choose between the PDF and EPUB formats for downloading books.

What is EPUB?

EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, allowing publishers to produce and distribute a ‘digital publication’ file and offer consumers interoperability between software and hardware for unencrypted reflowable digital books.

“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,” Brandon Badger, product manager, Google Books, wrote on the Inside Google Books blog. "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..."

How do I download a book from Google Books?

Easy, just find any public domain book on Google Books and click on the Download button in the toolbar.

More information on Google Online Services - Accessible Information Applications

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