Reading Google Books

[Cito]

Has anybody found a way to read Google books on the Cybook?

I'm talking about the books available at books.google.com, like e.g. this one.

[HarryT]

I don't think there's really any practical way to read such books; they are designed solely for online reading, AFAIK.

[Cito]

Too bad. But I just found that some of these Google books have download links. The one I linked to seemed to have a copyright. I did not expect this since the book is very old, and is fully available for reading at Google anyway.

here is another Google book with a PDF link. Need to check whether Cybook can read this, or it can be converted to Mobireader format.

[Justy]

Of course if you just want to read those books for free, HarryT has made a lovely compilation of the Complete Sherlock Holmes collection in Mobipocket format.
You can find it here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ghlight=holmes
RWood created Harvard Classics, Volume 19, which contains Faust Part 1 by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe which can be found here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=Faust

[HarryT]

Where Google is invaluable is where you have OCR errors in a PG book and you're not certain what the correct word should be (especially if it's a foreign name, for example). Being able to go to the page scans at Google and look at the original page is great - I've done that on a number of occasions with the books I've created.

[Justy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Where Google is invaluable is where you have OCR errors in a PG book and you're not certain what the correct word should be (especially if it's a foreign name, for example).

Good point Harry, I hadn't thought of that. The message from Cito looked to be a request for books for reading, not reference.

[HarryT]

Oh yes, I agree. Just making a comment about what Google books is useful for, even if it's not reading the books .

[llasram]

Originally Posted by Cito

Too bad. But I just found that some of these Google books have download links. The one I linked to seemed to have a copyright. I did not expect this since the book is very old, and is fully available for reading at Google anyway.

I'm pretty sure all the books Google has for "full view" and download are scans of works now in the public domain. If you mean the license / "usage guidelines" Google slaps on the beginning of the downloadable PDFs then yeah: they own the copyright on the electronic version they're providing even if the source p-book in the public domain -- I believe, but IANAL, etc.

For reading them on your device, try searching here for "PDF rasterizer," "PDF rasterizing," etc. There are several such tools, at least some of which can produce Mobipocket books IIRC.

[Cito]

Originally Posted by Justy

Of course if you just want to read those books for free, HarryT has made a lovely compilation of the Complete Sherlock Holmes collection in Mobipocket format. You can find it here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ghlight=holmes RWood created Harvard Classics, Volume 19, which contains Faust Part 1 by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe which can be found here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=Faust

Thanks, this is interesting, but my these books were really only examples. There are probably a lot of other Google books which are not already available as ebooks elsewhere.

[Cito]

As suspected, the Cybook was not able to open the PDF downloaded from Google books. It even crashed and I needed to do a reset. But even if the PDF would be readable, or could be converted to make it readable, many books will probably suffer from the problem that the Cybook PDF reader cannot zoom.

Just found instructions for making ebooks from Google books under "similar threads" below (Google Books -> eBook). But this seems to be a very tedious work.

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Cito

As suspected, the Cybook was not able to open the PDF downloaded from Google books. It even crashed and I needed to do a reset. But even if the PDF would be readable, or could be converted to make it readable, many books will probably suffer from the problem that the Cybook PDF reader cannot zoom.

Just found instructions for making ebooks from Google books under "similar threads" below (Google Books -> eBook). But this seems to be a very tedious work.

Like Harry T. has mentioned in quite a few threads... PDF is not meant to be read in ebook format...never had and never will be..........."until a BIG escreen" is available for it.

Using Mobipocket Creator... is the solution and perfect for the gen3

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Where Google is invaluable is where you have OCR errors in a PG book and you're not certain what the correct word should be (especially if it's a foreign name, for example). Being able to go to the page scans at Google and look at the original page is great - I've done that on a number of occasions with the books I've created.

Yes, I've done that too. You have to be careful to choose an old enough edition, however. I've found a couple of google books results that looked like they were based on the PG text and not vice-versa (too similar formatting, "obvious" typos uncorrected, etc.).

[Cito]

Originally Posted by hidari

Like Harry T. has mentioned in quite a few threads... PDF is not meant to be read in ebook format...never had and never will be..........."until a BIG escreen" is available for it.

However, PDF is so widespread that we cannot simply ignore it.

The only real problem with the format is that it is not reflowable, and if the Cybook had a better PDF reader with zoom feature, this would not be such a big problem. Currently, you can only read PDFs with a small page size similar to the Cybook. Sometimes you can achieve this by cropping off borders using Acrobat writer. Then reading such books on the Cybook is actually not so bad.

Also, Adobe has a PDF reader for ebooks and they are working on the problem (see Wikipedia). It is possible even today to produce PDA-friendly PDF ebooks; PDF per se is not unusable for small escreens.

It's just a matter of how how the PDF files have been created. The Google PDF books for instance, are probably only a file image per page (and I suppose in a compressed format that cannot be read by the Cybook). That's not really what PDF was intended for.

Originally Posted by hidari

Using Mobipocket Creator... is the solution and perfect for the gen3

Yes, but that does not help me much when my books are not available in Mobireader format or cannot be easily converted into that format.

[JSWolf]

Actually, we can ignore PDF as an eBook format.

[hidari]

Originally Posted by Cito

However, PDF is so widespread that we cannot simply ignore it.
es, but that does not help me much when my books are not available in Mobireader format or cannot be easily converted into that format.

What format are they in? PDF? is easily convertible to .prc by mobipocket creator.. Or are they DRM protected? I usually buy in .prc have also converted classics from PDF to .prc quite quickly with mobipocket creator....

and with .lit I just add one more step with ABClit converter... but to each his own....