Purchase and rent textbooks from Google Play Books

Compared to Amazon's digital content and apps, more and more people are moving towards Google's eco-system from Chrome browser to Google Drive cloud. Many folks even purchase eBooks from Google Books exclusively. At a press held in San Francisco last Wednesday, Google announced that it would integrate digital textbooks to its eBook business. Starting from this month (August this year), students will be able to purchase or rent e-textbooks from Google Play Books, which can be achieved on iOS, Android as well as desktop webpage.

Google Play Books acclaimed to offer a "comprehensive selection of titles" from the primary textbook providers, which means students will be able to get textbooks of different genres and subjects they need. Textbooks will be offered at a discount of 80% (at most) and students can rent textbooks for a period of 6 months. However, this service is only available for US students by far.

In the meantime, Google also released a new Google Play Books app for iOS with textbook purchase and rental service added, which is likely to impact Apple's iBooks textbook offerings.


When using Google Play Books to read textbooks on the mobile devices (Nexus 7, iPad, iPhone, etc.), students can search (through the book, web or wikipedia), highlight, bookmark, take notes and switch reading modes. All highlights and notes will be auto synced across different smart devices under the same Google account.

When using Google Play Books to read textbooks on the mobile devices (Nexus 7, iPad, iPhone, etc.), students can search (through the book, web or wikipedia), highlight, bookmark, take notes and switch reading modes. All highlights and notes will be auto synced across different smart devices under the same Google account.


All the time, textbook cost is a big burden to most students. Google Play textbook purchase & rental service will no doubt benefit those who read a lot but can't afford much. Refer to this page if you also want to rent textbooks from Amazon.