Textbooks Arrive on Google Play, Books App Updated With New Features

Textbooks have arrived on Google Play for the student in all of us. With both rentals and purchases available, Google is claiming to have a “long list of publishing partners” and a “comprehensive selection of higher education titles” to get the school year started with. Gone are the days of toting around a backpack with 20 lbs of books in it – the times of textbooks on tablets, phones, and in cloud has arrived. Well, at least on Android it finally has. 

Google may even have deals on select book rentals that will run you 80% under what an actual printed textbook purchase would cost. You can access textbooks on Google Play in the Books section, through the pulldown menu.

In related news, Google also updated their Play Books app to include compatibility with the new textbooks section. Rentals of books is now supported, along with highlighting and note-taking through scanned pages books, an improved scrubber, and other performance tweaks.

Here is the full changelog:

• Highlighting and note-taking are now supported in scanned pages books.
• Added support for rental books.
• Added support for copying selected text if copyright allows.
• Improved UI design of the scrubber and recommendation cards.
• Stability and performance improvements.

Via:  Android Blog | Google Play Textbooks | Play Books