Google Bookstore: A review

[Requia ☣]

If you haven't heard yet, Google has launched its own eBook store.  I've been going through it through it today.

The store has comparable prices to Amazon and B&N, and has a variety of free public domain books in addition to the paid books.  Unlike most free books, the table of contents in the epub files are compatible with my Sony's ToC function.

Purchasing paid books was substantially more painful.  I can read by book just fine online, but in order to get it into the eReader, I had to go through a program called Adobe Digital Editions.  This thing is probably the worst piece of software I have ever used.  It lacks basic menu options like the ability to load ascm files (which is the only reason I can think of to ever use the the program) so I lost some time going through the help files to find out how to do this (you have to drag and drop the files), and I spent over an hour getting it to recognize that I had plugged my reader in.  As far as I can tell, this is the only way to get a DRM encumbered book onto a Nook or Sony reader without going through the respective company stores, so this may not really reflect on Google the way it does on Sony, B&N, and Adobe.

Also, will strip the DRM momentarily, PM for a copy of 'The Complete Works of Niccolo Machiavelli' if you want it, (not even copyright infringement, they put DRM on a public domain book).

[Requia ☣]

It was easier to break the DRM than to get Digital editions to recognize my reader.