News announcement regarding the ability to download books online:

“I’m excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places.” — Google Books

I’m not seeing how this decision is all that significant.  Most of the public domain books have already been available in one way or another, and it’s never hard to pick up one of these books cheaply in a used bookstore.  Sure you might find a gem if you look hard enough, but sometimes the search is long and fruitless.  I have used the Stanza IPod Touch app up until now to download free classics, and though it’s cool, it’s only once in a while when I get an urge to reread Heart of Darkness.

I tried the new service out today by stopping by Google Books. It’s hard to tell which of the books are even in the public domain.  It seems that many of the offerings are not available for download (therefore, not in the public domain).  I downloaded Treasure Island, since that was the example book and had to install a third party desktop app to open the EPUB version of the novel.  I chose Stanza (since I’m familiar with the mobile app) and thought I’d try the desktop version.  The IPhone surely put that software package on the map.  (I think I heard a rumor that Amazon bought Stanza). 

It opened the book easily enough, but I’m not likely to read many novels on my computer screen.  I have definitely made the switch to watching television shows and some movies on my laptop, but I’ve yet to read any substantial work.  Even reading Anthem recently on the IPod Touch is a slow, occasional process.  (Anthem is downloadable on Stanza, but there is no Download option on the Google Books version.)

I tire somewhat of how certain companies brag about having a huge collection of "something," when you really get to the bottom, it’s exaggerated advertising.  Of Netflix’s large catalog of 12,000 movies, about 500 I’d imagine are even worth watching.  Amazon touts their Kindle, but they do not even have a large number of important works available.  Same with the public domain: how many books in the public domain do people even read (outside of being assigned it in high school), and of those, who actually reads a digital version of it?  And it seems like copyright law protects most books from ever entering the public domain.