As promised, Google has started selling and renting text-books from Google Play on Thursday. The service is only live in United States right now and there is no word on whether the company plans to expand it to other countries.
Text books are available as a sub-section of Google Play Books and there seems to be offerings from six different publishers at this point. The number is likely to increase in the coming weeks.
Students and teachers can either rent or buy these text-books but not every book currently offers both modes of procurement. The rented or bought books can be read on the Google Play Books app on Android/ iOS or via web browser on PC or Mac.
Google has also updated the Play Books app to include a new sepia reading mode as well as support for highlighting and note-taking in scanned pages of the books.
Google Play Books full change-log
- 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.
