Google is making over a million public domain books available in EPUB format
This is incredibly exciting… The book as a concept (a closed work, a well-known author or group of authors, compulsory submission, etc.) will no doubt survive, but that doesn’t mean the way we access the medium can’t be digitised. Just as with music and films, it is free distribution that drives the market, but before we can truly set information free, an open, global standard must be created for how copyright-protected material is distributed and accessed without the risk of piracy, and without being dependent on a specific provider or hardware platform.
Quote from Engadget:
‘The deal may have first been announced somewhat quietly last month, but now that Sony has launched what is arguably its most attractive e-reader to date, the availability of over a million public domain books in the Sony-friendly EPUB format is sure to attract a fair bit more attention. As Google announced on its Inside Google Books blog, those books are now all available for download from today and are, of course, completely free and can be used on any EPUB-compatible device of your choice. The move also takes on particular significance [...]’