Free Novel Downloads

[KenR]

Google is planning to offer Google Book Search users the ability to download and print selected classic out of copyright novels as PDF files for free. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt says he believes that this project will introduce many people to books that they would never have normally discovered.

The free novel program started life as Google's giant initiative to put books online in a searchable format. Through an outside project known as Gutenberg, volunteers have been scanning public domain books for many years to text files that can in turn be used for printing or reading. Google is acquiring this information, and will allow users to access these books in a print ready format.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/30/google-to-offer-free-novels/

[zridling]

Ken, have you found many downloadable books yet? I spent some time with this today and there was little to be found before 1926. Everything I searched was a link to an Amazon or BN.com book. Why do I need google to look at 3 previewed pages of any new book when Amazon already does that?

[app103]

If I understand this correctly, they plan on making available in .pdf form, content that is already available as .txt from here:  http://www.gutenberg.org

[mouser]

and some negative reaction to google's stuff from people who have some good points:
http://www.planetpdf.com/creative/article.asp?ContentID=Free_PDF_eBooks_from_Google&gid=7376&updf