A Million Free Google Books in ePub - for Kindle - UPDATE4

UPDATE2-4, 2/6/11 - Original posting was 8/27/09, Update1 was made 4/22/10.

Google has combined its free Google books with ones they sell now, and the earlier instructions (below) on how to find downloadable, free files no longer apply.
The rest of it is the same, however.

Google seems to have combined the free books with the paid books and now may require you to  (1) have a Google account for downloading Google e-books as well as  (2) a credit card even to download a free book *IF it's not a public-domain book* (corrected information from @mikecane).

  I had a credit card with Google already because I had experimented with buying a web-version of a paid Google Book when the Google web Bookstore was launched, and I was asked for it when I tried to download "The eBook Insider" - which is free but is NOT a public domain book.

  I used it today to 'buy' this $0.00 Google eBook to test whether these are still easily convertible to Kindle format AND uploadable to Retroread (see details below), who will convert free *public-domain* Google files for the Kindle community, at no cost.  If someone else has already requested a particular free Public Domain Google eBook, it'll be listed on the Retroread site as downloadable by everyone else for their Kindles.

The basic steps when I 'bought' this currently-free NON-public-domain book:

. Click on a book you want and it'll give you the option to 'buy' it even if its $0.00 AND if it's NOT a public-domain book.  It'll give you the option to "Get" it if it's in the public domain, and you can then click to download it.
. After 'buying' it, I received these alerts:
    "This book has been added to My Google eBooks" and
    "Access all your Google eBooks at books.google.com"
. After clicking on "My Google Books," you can see the books you've downloaded, both paid and free.
. Click on the book you just received and you're given options to
    "Read now" (which would be in web-browser version) OR
    "Read on your device" (Nook, Sony, Kobo etc but not Kindle)

Google then offers you the following choices to be able to read the new book:
1. Installing a Smartphones app (Android) or a Tablet app (iPhone & iPad)
2. Laptop and computers (reading in web browser)
3. eReader and other devices
    a. ePub
    b. Adobe PDF (*IF* included)
Choose "ePub"

*NOTE*:  Retroread could NOT convert my free Google book because it isn't a public-domain book and is therefore not successfully searchable on their site.  I then converted it via Calibre as described below.

  Again, when a Google eBook IS public domain and free, you are given the option to "GET" the book without purchasing it.  When you click to accept that option, the eBook winds up in your Google library.


The earlier section below explains how to get and use Calibre to easily convert any free ePub Google file to Kindle format or use Retroread site to have it done for you if the book is in the public domain.

UPDATE1, 4/22/10 - Original posting was 8/27/09 (Kindle model info updated)
I've added, at the bottom of this post, a section about a new service that will convert a Google Book FOR you (using the method below) and send it to your Kindle if you want (Amazon charges 15 cents per megabyte of a file if Whispernet delivery of a file) OR to the email address you use for correspondence with Amazon (no cost involved).

---

Original Posting on How to Convert free Google ePub books to Kindle format

Aug. 27, 2009 -- Yesterday Google offered over a million free e-books in EPUB format as well as in PDF format.

  These are easier to work with because they involve text-reflow instead of keeping a page exactly as originally laid out and therefore with words too small on e-screens.  Also, Google has done that text-reflow for us, which should bring more reliable to-MOBI conversions for files that had originally been among the more-complex PDFs.
  This will also allow highlighting, note-adding, font-size adjustments, and will be included in search results when the full Kindle is searched for key words.  We just need to convert them to MOBI files.

  Some newspapers are reporting the million+ free Google files are not readable on the Kindle.
  They are.  They just need a simple conversion.

There are currently at least three popular free tools that can convert ePub files to Kindle-compatible MOBI files:  (1) mobigen.exe (not intuitive);  (2) Mobipocket Reader 6.2  (loses some of the styling); and (3) Calibre, which has a nice interface, is easy to use, works with pc's and Macs, and gets the best results.

So, Calibre it is.  Many use it already for organized computer records of their Kindle files or for retrieving combinations of newspaper feeds for their Kindles (not as easily navigated as the paid subscrptions).
  This blog article focuses only on converting the ePub file-format to a Kindle-readable one.

  If you don't already have this free software, created and maintained by Kovid Goyal, download Calibre here.

GET A FREE GOOGLE BOOK OR TWO
  To get a free Google book (most written before 1923 but there are some nice older magazines there as well), go to Google's book site.

  To find a free book (they are all mixed with $$$-books), click on "Full Preview" as those tend to be the free ones.  Then do a search for what you want.

  At the top right, once you choose a book, you'll see "Download" which will be a pull-down menu showing a choice of PDF or ePub. (See update of Feb. 6, 2011, above.)

  If you have a Kindle DXG, you might prefer to just get the PDF.  If the words on the PDF are too small though, then get the ePub file.  IF you download an ePub file, then:

CALIBRE
  Open and run Calibre.  On the LEFT will be your choices for set-up when you're converting a document.  Hovering over anything will usually bring a help tip.

  Accepting defaults is fine.  The ability to change the "meta information" is nice - so you can have names and authors as you like them.  If there is no Table of Contents you can 'force' Calibre to create one.

  At the top are choices to "Edit meta information: as well as "Convert E-books." Follow the instructions, and then press the 'OK' button and the conversion will take a few minutes.  I did one and moved it to the Kindle DX and it looks great.

Oh, Calibre gives you the option to optimize your converted file for the Kindle 2 or the Kindle DX.

So, yes, those million+ free Google books are fully useable on the Kindle - it just needs this added step, but it's also great to be able to customize so much of the layout if you want.  Play with the software a bit.

THE BOOK STORES - MASHABLE'S POINTS
The report by Mashable's Stan Schroeder makes some good points:

"... the first major difference between the Kindle and this Google-Sony open book strategy: while Amazon only offers 300,000 titles, Google’s million books aren’t, for the most part, the most attractive ones, and Sony’s own ebook library doesn’t offer a choice as good as Amazon – at least when it comes to modern titles.

Sure, if you’re interested in an oldie, such as the Memoirs of Granville Sharp, Google’s library is a good choice, but if you’re looking to buy a digital copy of the latest bestseller, you’re more likely to find it on the Kindle than in Google’s library and Sony’s ebook store combined.  You can sometimes buy an ebook online and then transfer it to your Sony ebook reader, but on the Kindle it’s simpler and easier to do.

---

Also see:
  Read foreign-language Google-books in English online
  Google describes the book conversion process
  How to download any of the 30,000 Project Gutenberg books to your Kindle, direct.

UPDATE 4/22/10 - RETROREAD'S AUTOMATED GOOGLE BOOK CONVERSIONS
RetroRead (BLTC Press) offers free conversion of any free ePub Google Book to Amazon Kindle format for delivery to your Kindle or to your computer via your normal email address.  As RetroRead's David Eyes describes in his Blitzes at BLTC blog you will be able to create an account through which you may upload any free Google ePub book (but ONLY Google book files), and have it converted and forwarded directly to you.  He adds that the quality of the converted book can vary greatly depending on the quality of Google’s optical character recognition (OCR) conversion.  The site is self-explanatory.

  Once you've registered and read the Terms of Use, you can go to http://books.google.com and choose a free Google book to read, downloading the ePub version to your computer, at which point you're given the option to have that downloaded file automatically uploaded to Retroread for immediate conversion to Kindle format (using RetroReadhelper -- Windows for that though) and then either sent to your Kindle* or to your email address or linked at the Retroread site where you can download the converted file and then move it to your Kindle via the USB cable.

* If you do want the direct-to-Kindle option, you need to have created earlier a special address for files to your Kindle -- [you]@kindle.com ...
  So be sure you've set up a [you]@kindle.com address first.  This setup is done at your Amazon "Manage Your Kindle" page.  Here's a guide for using that management page.
 This would involve letting RetroRead have your [you]@kindle.com address and, as mentioned, the Amazon fee for whispernet delivery would apply (15 cents per megabyte of a book -- with most ePub books under 1 megabyte -- but the one I uploaded tonight was over 2 megs because some pages were image scans).  However, you can also choose to just get the converted file and move it to the Kindle yourself.  Read his blog for the additions he's made to the site's capabilities.  Lots of good things.

 You can also choose recently converted Google books that are listed as available for download on the left side of the RetroRead page.

For those looking for interesting less-seen free books, it's hard to do better than David's list of the Latest Converted files.

 At any rate, this is a quick intro.  I tried it last night and it works well.  The book I converted for this blog article was used at Retroread, and the results were the 99% the same, since RetroRead uses Calibre also, although the last half of the final page, which happened to be the Table of Contents page at the end, was missing.

  Many will find this service very convenient.  But the service is not offered for any ePub books other than the Google books.  However, you can use this blog guide to do that yourself as needed.  Your own conversion from ePub to Amazon format should take about three minutes after you've had a chance to work with it.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

---

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Updating of Best Kindle Bookmarks for Kindle web browser.

This is just a link to the updated blog entry for the free, downloadable Best Kindle Bookmarks for the Kindle Web Browser;  for some reason, the Google Reader does not place older updated articles at the top, even when they have new dates on them, so this is to make sure RSS readers can find it.

As mentioned there, today's update was to add special links to Facebook and to Google News that work better on all the Kindles.  I also explain what can't be done on the Kindles at those sites.

I also modified some of the notes about all the links to try to make the tips a bit clearer. The filename remains the same, so you can just re-download it if you already have the older copy.

Free Download of Best Website Bookmarks for Kindle Web Browser - UPDATE5

UPDATED December 5.
  Today's update was to add special links to Facebook and to Google News that work better on all the Kindles.  I also explain what can't be done on the Kindles at those sites.

  I also modified some of the notes about the links to try to make the tips a bit clearer.  The filename remains the same, so you can just re-download it if you already have the older copy.

You can see earlier updated info (9/29/10) here on how to get the file to your Kindle via WiFi directly or via 3G and how to transfer it to the Kindle via USB if unable to send it there directly.

  As of December 5, the Kindle orders are limited to three per customer, and estimated shipping time for orders outside the U.S. is several weeks.

I've updated the freely downloadable bookmarks file andrys.com/mobiweb.azw to include links to sites that work better for Kindle 3 models  (UK: K3), as some of the websites have worked well with Kindle 2 and Kindle DX's but not with the Kindle 3, due to the new model's typed-input not always being recognized by some of Google's productivity sites.

This is a separate Kindle file (in 'book' format) for mainly mobile-device-optimized website bookmarks, which you can use as a Kindle file made up OF the bookmarks listed -- the websites are linked already in that file so that you can use them for the Web when your Wireless is On and this 'book' is open.  The Kindle 3 seems to do better in some cases on non-mobile-device-optimized sites, so those are included also.

  Still part of that bookmarks file are the website links that work well for Kindle 2's and DX's, and at the bottom there are general websites that work well for all Kindles.  See the original blog article that explains it and which also has links to how to use the various web-browsing modes of the earlier Kindles, and with tips in general for browsing on the experimental and limited web browser, whether through the free 3G cellphone network capability (usable without a need to locate a 'hotspot') or via the faster WiFi option (if one has access to a local WiFi network) available for Kindle 3's.

  For anyone not clear on 3G vs WiFi-only, you can read the blog article on 3G and WiFi-Only Kindle 3's - What does it all mean? Which should I get?.

  The Kindle 3 shortcuts added should avoid problems w/some sites when accessing with that model.

    Kindles earlier than Kindle 3 use BASIC and ADVANCED/DESKTOP modes.
    Kindle 3 uses WEB Mode, with ARTICLE Mode available for some web articles.


You can download the file to a computer for transfer to the 'documents' folder of the Kindle or download it directly to your Kindle using the Kindle itself to get the file.  To do any of this, you can

  . either use a USB cable to transfer or "sideload" the
      downloaded file from computer to Kindle's "documents" folder.

  . OR type into your Kindle at the Home screen, bit.ly/kmobiweb
      then 5-way right to "go to" and click on that
        and that will download the file direct to the Kindle

  . OR if in the Kindle Edition blog,
      click on the file link and it should download the file direct to Kindle. 

UPDATE: 10/1/10
Possible problem for some (corrected since, at the server, for lack of recognition of file types by the Kindle 3  even though the Kindle 1, 2, and DX models recognized Amazon Kindle format files for normal download).
  The Kindle 3 opened the Amazon file instead of downloading it as a file, and Kindle 3 users saw gibberish appearing on the screen, which was harmless but ugly.  For me, it happened only with the Kindle 3.  The Kindle 1, 2, and DX's were able to see it as a file.

  I'm putting the details into a new post so that the programmers might become aware it's happening, as my feedback received a boilerplate response.  See today's post (Friday, Oct. 1) for why it happened and how it was corrected for access at this server.

The ALWAYS RELIABLE ways are #1 above (move downloaded-to-computer file to Kindle) and the similar but more direct way of computer-to-Kindle transfer, which is:

  . Attach Kindle to your computer that is online with the Net
  . The Kindle will be seen as a separate 'drive' such as "F: {Kindle}"
  . Click on the 'documents' folder of the Kindle drive, to enter it.
  . In your browser, right-click your mouse on the file-link
      (some Macs require holding the mouse button instead).
  . Choose "Save Link as" or "Save Target as" or "Download/Save"
      depending on your computer and browser
  . Choose the Kindle 'documents' folder for the download.

Then the file will be where it belongs on the Kindle.  After that, use your computer's way of "safely ejecting" the USB device - in this case, the Kindle. 

The Kindle will show the Home screen again, and eventually the new 'mobiweb' file.

(That's like slower ground transport vs air travel.)

Also, Amazon is, for some reason, not considering an .azw Amazon file that IS a personal doc which they converted, to be a file that is acceptable for emailing to your Kindle.   For over a year, that caused no problem, but it is one now, so I deleted the instructions for emailing personal docs to the Kindle.

    Otherwise, you normally can send personal documents to [yourself]@free.kindle.com or to [yourself]@kindle.com once you have gone to your ManageYourKindle page and have approved any mail-to-Kindle-from-email-addresses for the section titled "Your Kindle Approved E-mail List."

The bookmarks file includes the following advice along with the links:

MAPS option works with Kindle 3, but is blocky and slow.

  Directions sub-option will show you text AND map (workable if ROTATED to landscape -
   almost impossible in portrait or vertical mode.

  TEXT directions, step-by-step are much easier to get and read.

    USE http://maps.google.com/m/directions

      See Kindleworld guide for that at bit.ly/kdriving.

MAIL – If you choose this from this Google menu, it does the usual over-complex mail-threading and folders display and is painfully slow or cumbersome even with WiFi.
  Shortcut to painful mode: http://bit.ly/gmail

  USE http://bit.ly/g_mail for a faster experience and bear in mind that to finish a Reply, you need to arrow to the end and leave the Reply box. If you know a better way, let me know.
  (PgDn gets you down faster but doesn’t allow exiting the box
   but you can PgDn and end with cursor-down to exit.)

    Credit to Bill in Kindleworld's Comments area for the Gmail and Gtasks URLS

  ALTERNATE: For a compromise, here’s Advanced Gmail in Basic HTML
    USE for that: http://bit.ly/gmailmobile
      It’s slower but not so painful.

TASKS/CALENDAR (Google still)
  There are problems, with the Kindle 3, in being able to type input into login or search-fields sometimes, with Google features, even though the Kindle 2 and DX’s can handle those fine.  The new shortcuts I‘ve made for google sites are to versions that work with the K3.

  USE http://bit.ly/g_tasks (that’s with an underscore)

  Tasks are coordinated with your calendar when in Gmail on the computer.

GOOGLE READER (RSS feeds)
  USE http://bit.ly/g-reader '

The bookmark links start with the ones Amazon put on the Kindles, and modifications or recommendations are included.

  At the end, I've added general bookmarks to websites I've enjoyed using on the Kindle.

  That includes pure-text versions of the full NYTimes - much faster to read through on the Kindle when you just want to see the latest news.

You can also reference these on the PC or Mac at the same time if you want, while using the file on the Kindle.  If you haven't already downloaded either of these free apps for your computer, you can do that at Kindle for PC page or at Kindle for Mac page.

Suggestions for links I might add later would be very welcome.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

---

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Alert re updated Project Gutenberg blog article

This is just an entry to compensate for Google Reader's inability to 'see' the Project Gutenberg article updated today.

New Zealand gets the Kindle. Non-Amazon e-books for Kindle - how to get them

New Zealand is finally getting the Kindle 3, according to this report by Stuff in New Zealand and the linked Amazon product page.

 The Kindle will be meeting Whitcoulls' Kobo e-reader head-on there, and the Stuff news reporter believes the company PR that the Kobo "appears to have a much larger range of e-books available; more than two million [books]," but this includes the 500,000 free Google Books and the 30,000 Project Gutenberg books.   The free Google Books are also available for the Kindle in two ways - see:

1. How to get a free Google book converted to Kindle format (for free, by the Retroread site, or with the flexible free utility Calibre), and also

2. check out how to download to the Kindle the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog of 30,000 free e-books which allows Kindle owners to browse and search the catalog and then click to download what they want in Kindle's "MOBI" format (with no download charges in both cases).

  A thorough review of the Kobo is at Laptop Magazine, and what is unusual is that it will be more expensive than the Kindle while having no 3G or WiFi features, no built-in dictionary, no Search feature, no highlighting and notes and it is much criticized for being unusually slow, even for an e-Ink reader.  How this unit stays at all competitive now unless the company upgrades the unit is a real question.  Its website has a comparison chart that has not modified the Nook or Kindle pricing though they've been lowered for about 3 weeks.

Stuff has some good news for New Zealanders in that Martin Taylor, the director of the Digital Publishing Forum says the group expects to launch a digital warehouse that would let publishers manage and distribute e-books in the next few months.
  "We're working with about 40 local publishers who have put their hands up and I would guess hundreds, possibly a thousand, New Zealand books will be available [through the warehouse], {which will} broker with e-book distributors on behalf of publishers and the forum is in talks with several e-book retailers now, including Amazon and Whitcoulls.

Many other sources for free e-books direct to the Kindle at no charge are also mentioned at the Finding Free Kindle Books and Sources page, which I'll redo soon, as it's not well-organized for all the info that's there.  That info is on most footers of the blog articles here.


Kindle 3   (UK: Kindle 3),   DX Graphite

---

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

RetroRead's Free Google book conversion service

For some reason the Google RSS-feed reader will not move updated older posts (past 25 days) to the latest date, and so yesterday's update, about RetroRead, added to the Million Free Google books blog article is not showing up on the Google Reader.

Here's a link to it so that google reader users can find it and give it a try.  
It's a new service that will convert a Google Book FOR you and send it to your Kindle if you want (Amazon charges 15 cents per megabyte of a file if Whispernet delivery of a file) OR to the email address you use for correspondence with Amazon (no cost involved).

Read foreign-language Google-books in English online

This article started as a forum-post in reply to the question:
  "Can you guys post any good books you're finding through Google? Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I can't find anything decent."
  Several other forum members had the same experience when trying to find books that interested them.

  I think it's that Kindle users have already found so many good public domain books or "classics" (for free or under $1) just on Amazon alone (7,000+) and then at Project Gutenberg (30,000), MobileReference, feedbooks, manybooks.net (mnybks.net direct-to-Kindle), fictionwise, etc., that most we'll find now are duplicates.

  I hadn't looked, beyond doing the blog-entry the other day about converting Google ePub public-domain books to Kindle-readable ones.

WHAT SEEMS AVAILABLE
  I just now went to Google Books and, from the categories shown at the left column there, I chose "Literature."

  This brought up the first-30 of 1,805 results under that 'literature' category.

  Seeing all the attractive, colorful pictures of covers that resulted, I realized these probably include a lot of books that are being SOLD rather than just free public domain ones.
  Looking up at the pull-down menu, I saw that it said:
      "Showing: Limited preview and fullview"
  which means this search result includes books you have to buy.

  So, I changed the pull-down menu to the choice:
      "Showing: Full view only"
  (which is available only for free, public domain books and magazines).
  And then, most of the covers seen now were the plain, generic types, for the most part, and included books in other languages.
  They should have searches limitable to a certain language!

  Even then, this resulted in only 42 books, with maybe half or more of them in other languages.  I realize Google said they included libraries from all over the world, but ...

  THEN I changed the pull-down menu to show the option:
      "Showing: All books"
  This got me some rather esoteric selections. Since I love the singing of a baritone named William Sharp, I whimsically clicked on a book on the front page (that claimed 4,424 books listed) titled:
      "The sexual tensions of William Sharp"   :-)
  and saw the following description of that book (excerpted below)
=======
Title   The sexual tensions of William Sharp: a study of the birth of Fiona Macleod, incorporating two lost works, Ariadne in Naxos and "Beatrice"
Volume 2 of Studies in nineteenth-century British literature
Volume 2 of Studies in Modern Poetry
Author Terry L. Meyers
Publisher P. Lang, 1996
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Mar 13, 2008"
...
=======

So, I guess these million books include esoteric academic treatments of various topics, not a bad feature! and generally not available in the usual public domain offerings elsewhere.  They also include old magazines.

Note that there are a lot of categories on the front page's left column.  Also, the front page displays an assortment of the type of books or magazines available and are grouped in the following way:

Interesting
Classics
Magazines
Highly cited
Random Subject - (This changes each time -- was "Alcoholics Fiction")


TRANSLATING books written in another language:
SO, I decided to go back to 'Literature" and see if I could produce a Google translation of one of these books written in another language, and sure enough Google has made it possible, although there is currently no option saying "translate" on the page.

I chose one of the Italian books on the front page of the public-domain books search-results:
  "Scritti letterari di un Italiano vivente (1847) by Giuseppe Mazzini "

  I browsed through it until I came to a page that began with a new paragraph which I thought would be a good example for a translation.  I chose page 24.

  In our case, knowing which page we want, we don't have to tediously arrow through each page.  You can just enter '24' in the input box there, press your Enter key, and it'll take you to page 24.

 What you'll see there is the scanned image that Google made from that page.

  But they also give us the option to see this in "Plain text" -- so I clicked on that option above the text.

 This took me to the version showing the plain text from pages 20-24 (see top left there).

  In the web browser's URL/or Location Field, the long URL for the plain-text Italian version was:
    http://books.google.com/books?ei=zbqYSqGUOp7CzQSwh-XbDg&rview=1&output=text&as_brr=1&id=w4hptHSmqvMC&dq=subject%3A%22+Literature+%22&jtp=24.

  SO, I did a Ctrl-N for a new Window (or Ctrl-Tab in Firefox for a new TAB) and that brought up a window in which I could put in the URL (below) to be taken to Google's Translation page, which is at
    http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en.

    At Google's translation page, I put the full, long URL for the Italian book's "plain text" version of the page -- which gives us text from pages 20-24 -- into the "Translate a web page" feature at the bottom left of the Google translation page.
  Then I chose Italian to English below that input box and clicked on "Translate"...

  That brought me to Google's book again, this time displaying pages 20-24 in English.

    Here's an image of what I saw.

  Remember that this is an automated and usually somewhat-primitive web-translation, but it definitely gives you the gist of what is being said.

  When your mouse hovers for a bit over the translated text, Google shows you the original-language's text for that small area and asks if you'd like to contribute a better translation for it.  If you do, you click on that to put your suggestion into the pop-up input box.

  I then scrolled to the bottom of the page and clicked on "Continue" at the bottom right.

  This brought up pages 25-29 translated into English also, and it goes on like that throughout the rest of the book if you like.

  Really nice !

Google describes the book conversion process

This is an Addendum to yesterday's article on how Kindle owners can read any of Google's million-plus public domain books now offered in ePub format -- thanks to a simple 3-minute conversion process, which also allows control over the layout if wanted (such as adding a hyperlinked Table of Contents if the book doesn't already have one).

Here is some info from Google's statement on August 26, explaining what they've managed to do here.

" Try doing a search for [Hamlet] on Google Books.  The first few results you'll get are "Full View" books — which means you can read the full text.  And, because the book is in the public domain, you can also download a copy of Hamlet in PDF form.

  Starting today, you'll be able to download these and over one million public domain books from Google Books in an additional format.  We're excited to now offer downloads in EPUB format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books.

Following that, they explain further why they're offering ePub versions of the books in addition to the PDF versions released earlier.

" 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. "

 That is followed by more detail on how this was accomplished and just what was involved.  They caution us that the books go through automated scanning that is sophisticated but nevertheless sometimes can't interpret words that aren't clear on the original page.

" The process begins with a book that has been preserved by one of our library partners from around the world.  Google borrows the book ... Before returning the book in undamaged form, we take photographs of the pages.  Those images are then stitched together and processed in order to create a digital version of the classic book.

  This includes the difficult task of performing Optical Character Recognition on the page image in order to extract a text layer we can transform into HTML, or other text-based file formats like EPUB (if you're interested, you can read more about this process here). "

I'll add a bit from that linked page here about readying text for the smaller screens of mobile phones and e-readers.

" [We] extract the text from the page images so it can flow on your mobile browser just like any other web page.  This extraction process is known as Optical Character Recognition (or OCR for short).  The following example demonstrates the difference between page images and the extracted text:

=> "Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson— which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs...


The extraction of text from page images is a difficult engineering task. Smudges on the physical books' pages, fancy fonts, old fonts, torn pages, etc. can all lead to errors in the extracted text.  The example below shows the page image from the original manuscript for Alice's Adventures Under Ground.  In this extreme case, the extracted text is riddled with errors:
=> "lV~e.il!" .ÍAoHyU- AUte. U brstty/affc. su.it a. f o.tl as ~tk¿* , I s&O.IL .éfiiíjz tiotkun-) of-ttmlr1¿*y ¿i^n. sta¿rs ! Jfo» ura.ve ...

They close with this:

" Imperfect OCR is only the first challenge in the ultimate goal of moving from collections of page images to extracted-text based books.  Our computer algorithms also have to automatically determine the structure of the book (what are the headers and footers, where images are placed, whether text is verse or prose, and so forth).  Getting this right allows us to render the book in a way that follows the format of the original book.

The technical challenges are daunting, but we'll continue to make enhancements to our OCR and book structure extraction technologies.  With this launch, we believe that we've taken an important step toward more universal access to books.

...If you do bump into some rough patches where the text seems, well, weird, you can just tap on the text to see the original page image for that section of text. "

That ability, when reading on a computer monitor, or a smartphone (the Kindle doesn't do this), to click your mouse on the text or tap the text on a touch screen, and then see the original text in the alternate image-scan format, is amazing.

---

Also see:
  A Million Free Google Books in ePub - for the Kindle
  Read foreign-language Google-books in English online