Google Play Books has been with us for a fair while and as an avid reader I have been disappointed so far to discover that we have so far been unable to read our own PDF or EPUB files. It looks as though the latest update to Google Play Books is about to change that though, the newest update has the following update :
Support for reading your own PDF or EPUB files. You can upload the files through our website play.google.com/books/uploads, and read them on all your devices.
Unfortunately it appears that the site play.google.com/books/uploads is not quite live as yet – a 404 error appears – but keep a close eye on the URL and hopefully it should go live at some stage today. We should also hopefully get some information on just how much storage is available to store your EPUB and PDF files.
Update
As per the comments, the page is now live for uploads :
Upload your personal documents to Google Play, and read them anywhere.
- Keep up to 1,000 EPUB or PDF files in Google Play for free.
- Upload from your computer or import from Google Drive.
- Read anywhere: in the web browser, on Android phones and tablets, or with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
- Page position, bookmarks, and notes are synced to the cloud, so you can pick up reading where you left off.
File size can’t exceed 50MB, and it may take a few minutes to finish processing before you can read. Learn more .
Make sure you have the appropriate rights to the uploaded content.
Will you begin using Google Play Books with this feature?
This is actually the hidden gem from I/O. I have several dozen epubs that I’ve uploaded to my Kindle via Calibre but this is awesome too. If it’s any consolation, these are books I already own physical copies of.
I’m disappointed there is still no support for physical books…like the “My library” section on the Google Books website where you can record books you’ve read, rate them, review them, books you want to read. It’d be so handy to be able to access that from my phone but Google seems to solely be focusing on digital books.
That’s just a reading social network, and that already exists with GoodReads. This seems to be something different and it’s great.
thanks guys, works great upload 2 epub books.
So its available on the website for me now. It wasn’t there until I updated the app on my phone. On the website it says the following:
Upload your personal documents to Google Play, and read them anywhere.
Keep up to 1,000 EPUB or PDF files in Google Play for free.
Upload from your computer or import from Google Drive.
Read anywhere: in the web browser, on Android phones and tablets, or with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Page position, bookmarks, and notes are synced to the cloud, so you can pick up reading where you left off.
File size can’t exceed 50MB, and it may take a few minutes to finish processing before you can read. Learn more .
Make sure you have the appropriate rights to the uploaded content.
I just checked and it appears to be working now, I can upload my books from that URL.