Google Book Search and Sony PRS Readers, A
Voluminous Combination
Sony and Google announced today the launch of a partnership to bring upwards of 500,000 public domain texts from Google's Book Search collections to Sony's line of electronic Readers at no cost to the user.
This service went live at 9 PM, PST (a bit earlier, actually) today, March 18th. It's accessible through the
Sony eBook Library software, on the main eBook Store page, over to the right about halfway down, by way of a link reading "
Unearth a Classic."
The books are searchable through a brand new interface by the folks at Google. The interface looks like it includes some downright nifty features to refine the search, including a categorized browsing approach and an "Advanced Search" feature, which presumably somewhat resembles the same named feature on Google's flagship search engine.
The advantages of familiarity for Google users would seem obvious, but there are a couple of extra goodies that seem be there from the preview screen shots. The search results appear to include a synopsis of information about the book, including cover pictures, and allow for downloading or previewing directly from those results.
It's important to note that all of these texts are in the
ePub format, making this not only the first deployment of ePub format through Sony's eBook Store, but also most likely the single largest block deployment of ePub to date. Those interested can find fairly detailed information on how Google went about creating these texts as ePub files on Google's
blog post on the matter. The post discusses the deployment of Google's mobile version of their Google Books service, but the details clearly apply to this newest endeavor.
This partnership further supports Sony's repeated assertions of great interest in keeping the PRS line open to easily supporting as much content as they can arrange.
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“We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform and making it easy to find as much content as possible – from our store or others – whether that content is purchased, borrowed or free,” said Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Business Division at Sony Electronics. “Working with Google, we can offer book lovers another avenue for free books while still providing a seamless experience from our store.”
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One exciting and less obvious benefit of this partnership is the great quantity of more obscure texts that it will include. Google Book Search has performed a yeoman's task in making available to everyone texts which survive in but a few hard copies.
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For example, literature lovers can find and read The Letters of Jane Austen in addition to “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma.” Also included are a number of titles in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages.
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The ready availability of such texts on Google Books has already proven a boon to literary scholars, the increase in readability by making them so easily available to a device which is handier than the average computer should prove yet another.
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“We founded Google Book Search on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture—and not just when they happen to be at a computer,” said Adam Smith, product management director [at Google Book Search, presumably]. “We believe in an open platform for accessing and reading books, and we’re excited to partner with Sony to help bring these public domain books to more people.”
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It will be very interesting to see what effect this has on the balance of power (such as it is) in the e-book world.
The full press release should appear on
this page shortly.