Free Access to Half a Million ebooks

Interread announces deal with Google books

British company Interread has announced a deal with Google, and is claiming that it now has the largest selection of titles in the world, far outstripping Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle store.

The agreement is the first of its kind outside the US and means that Interread’s customers will have access to more than one million public domain books from Google’s online library.  Those titles not under copyright will be available to download for free to Interread’s range of COOL-ER readers in arrange of 19 different formats including MP3 for audio books.

There are licensing restrictions in place in Britain which mean that only 500,000 or so will be available on this side of the pond, but even at a rate of one book a day it would take you 1370 years to read this many.  Half a million should satisfy even the most ardent bookworm for a while.

Interread has promised that the total number of books available from their website coolerbooks.com should top two million by the end of the year.

The founder of the company, Neil Jones, has also indicated that the coolerbooks.com  catalogue will be available to everyone, regardless of whether they own a COOL-ER reader.

“At Interead, our aim has always been to make ebooks available to ordinary book lovers, not just technology enthusiasts.  We want everyone to be able to enjoy the content on coolerbooks.com, so even if you don’t own one of our COOL-ER ereaders you can still download your favourite titles.

“And now, our partnership with Google allows us to offer more content than anyone else, as well as giving readers the freedom to have a look through ebooks that they might be interested in. We’re extremely proud to be the first ebookstore outside the US to partner with Google Books, and we hope that the collaboration will make the appeal and accessibility of ebooks broader than ever.”