Google Play Books has expanded into nine new countries today, bringing the total footprint to 26. Residents in Denmark, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Sweden can now access millions of free and paid ebooks.
One of the most interesting aspects of the entire Google Books experience is a new program the company unveiled a few months ago. It is a user portal that allows you to upload your own DRM-Free books in EPUB or PDF formats and have them synced to your Google Account. Any type of book with a digital watermark will also work on the service, such as Pottermore and TOR.
Poland and many other countries are seeing major booksellers are peddling digital books with watermarks and not bulky DRM encryption. It will be interesting to see if customers will gravitate towards the Google Platform, which is the operating system of choice for many of the top smartphones and tablets. Once readers get into a routine of being able to transfer books to any device and not have to rely on Adobe Digital Editions and propitiatory software, it is hard to break.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
