Google Play Store Makes Ebooks Available In India | TechTree.com

Google Play Store Makes Ebooks Available In India

Books are more expensive than competitors; music and movies for India will have to wait for now.

 

Google has officially opened up its Play Books service for India. Indian users will now be able to purchase and download ebooks from a collection of over 4 million titles via the web, as well as mobile version of the store. The Play Books app can be installed on Android and iOS devices and used to download, read, and manage such purchases.

In case they are downloaded on a computer, these books can also be read on third party e-reader apps or transferred to a supported device via Adobe Digital Editions Desktop Reader. A preview of the book is also available for users to sample before purchase.

The new Play Books store has been customised for Indian tastes and there are books from Indian authors such as Khushwant Singh, Devdutt Pattanaik, and Amish Tripathi. It is mentioned that the books, once purchased, are stored on the cloud, thus requiring internet connectivity in order to read them.

Currently, Amazon has such an ebook store over here with the Kindle Store, while Flipkart has also been selling ebooks since last year. Some of the books on Google Play Books have been found to be somewhat more expensive than the aforementioned competitors. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children costs Rs 755, whereas the same book costs just Rs 230 on Flipkart (although we agree that the digital format of Flipkart is rather restrictive).

In fact, Google's price is more than what a hard cover copy will cost. It is probable that Google is directly converting US dollar prices into Indian Rupee prices - if that is true, this initiative will get hurt precisely when it is supposed to take off.

The Google Play store is yet to open up Indian versions of stores for other things it sells such as music, movies, and hardware. However, we think that the search giant is testing waters with this initiative to eventually launch other stores.


Ebooks Now Available On Google India Play Store


TAGS: Internet, Google

 
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