How to download Google Books?

Google Books is the greatest public Internet library but it’s not very convenient to read books there. First – the inbuilt reader is odd enough for long reading and contains a lot of distracting elements such as search box, navigation menus, related books, ads that divert your attention. You have to open browser each time you want to read a book at Google Books. Second, you can’t read Google Books when you are offline (there are still many places without internet connection in the world). You can’t print Google Books and read them in bed, but need to sit in front of computer screen that harms your eyes. And you can’t use your favorite E-Book Reader (such as Sony Reader,
Kindle or Nook) or a mobile device that provide the most pleasant reading experience. Besides, if you use a book management software (such as Calibre or Alfa Ebooks Manager), where you use to store all your ebook library, you want to download Google Books to your hard drive. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t allow to download any book from Google Books.

But there are still 3 ways to download Google Books to your desktop:

1. Use the Google’s PDF download feature that is available for out-of-copyright books
2. Download books manually from the browser cache
3. Use a Google Books downloader

1. Use the Google’s PDF download feature for out-of-copyright books

For some out-of-copyright books Google Books provide PDF download tool, that allows users to download (and therefore print and read offline) these books. To find books you can download, click on the "Full view books" radio button before entering your search terms. Clicking on the "Download" button shown on public domain books will allow you to download a PDF of the book to your computer. Unfortunately, not all books that are fully viewable are downloadable as PDF files. The overall number of books with the full preview there is much larger.

2. Download books manually from the browser cache

The book pages that you can view in Google Books are presented as PNG images on the HTML page. So, it is possible to save any visible book page as an image to your computer. You can "save page as" in any browser and find the PNG image in the saved "files" folder. But you need to scroll the book and repeat this "save page as" operation for each page.

To make this process a little easier, you can use Internet Explorer (not Firefox). You can use the following wizard:
1. Open folder “C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\” of your computer machine and delete all of the content of the folder
2. Open the needed book at Google Books in Internet Explorer and scroll it down to the end (or use the page browser).
3. Open “Temporary Internet Files” folder. Copy all PNG files. These files are the pages of the scanned book
4. Now you can print the PNG files and arrange them in order for reading OR use a PDF compiler tool to create a single PDF file from multiple PNG images

3. Use a Google Books downloader

There are some tools that automate the routine operations described in the previous paragraph. But unfortunately, most of them don’t work properly – they either download only few book pages, or hang your computer, or cause ban of your Google Account. The most popular tool that was called Google Books Downloader was recently terminated by its creator. For now, the only tool that is recommended for downloading Google Books - is GooReader.

Though the primary feature of this small program is a comfortable book viewer that allows to read Google Books on your desktop, it also can convert Google Books to PDF files and save them on your computer. It works quite fast and can download a 300-pages book in few minutes. It also includes the inbuilt Google Books Search tool that shows, which books have a full view, partial preview or no preview. You also can view the number of available pages of each book. Besides, it doesn’t require you to log in your Google Account, so it’s no risk that it could be banned. You candownload GooReader here.

Is it legal to download Google Books?

The books and preview pages are published on Google Books basing on agreements with book authors and publishers. Nevertheless before making any specific use of downloaded books, you need to confirm the legality of your own actions. The rules regarding public domain materials differ from country to country, and sometimes the specific use is not allowed. That is why a book's inclusion in Google Books doesn’t mean it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. For example, Google recommends not to engage in large scale redistribution or rehosting of the book files, sell digital or physical book copies, or help other people buy and sell them. But you can convert Google Books to PDF for personal reading needs.

About Google Books

Google Books – is a very popular service that allows to search, preview and read online millions of books from libraries and publishers worldwide. It was previously known as Google Book Search and Google Print and was founded in 2004. All these books, that you can read or preview at Google Books, are scanned and converted to text using optical character recognition by Google employees. Of course, all this content is out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission. For in print books, Google limits the number of viewable pages through a variety of access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking. For books that may be covered by copyright and where the owner has not been identified, only "snippets" (two to three lines of text) are shown, though the full text of the book is searchable. On October 9, 2009, Google announced that the number of scanned books is over ten million. Most scanned works are no longer in print or commercially available. Neither Gooreader no Google Books downloader are affiliated with Google.