We have partnered with Google to sell their complete catalogue of Google eBooks on our site. These books can be read direct from "the cloud" (Google's servers), or direct from our website using any web-browser, direct from nearly all mobile devices (except Amazon's Kindle); and in addition can be downloaded to your home PC, and, from there, loaded to nearly all dedicated reading devices including the Nook, the Sony, and the Kobo (again, excluding the Kindle). Click here to watch a Google video.
The very first time you buy a Google eBook from us, you will be asked to specify your Google account and supply its password. If you don't already have a Google account, you will be asked to create one and create a password for it. Google will also ask you for permission to "link" your Google account to Bay Books for the purpose of purchasing eBooks. Having done this, you can now buy Google eBooks. And, whenever you visit our site after that, you can log in with either your Bay Books account, or your Google account, because they are linked. But you must log in with one or the other to buy any book (eBook, or physical book}. And, your shopping cart may contain, at any one time, either eBooks or physical books, but not both. You have to order the two types in separate orders.
Once you have purchased one or more Google eBooks from us, you will see them listed under "My Google eBooks" on our site. For each such book, you have two things you can do. You can read the book where it is, and/or you can download it to your PC. Please note that some e-books are available in only one format, others offer two possible formats for download: ePub, and PDF. The first of these is the industry standard for eBooks, and will work the best in most dedicated readers. The second is the Adobe Acrobat format, which may be better for large picture books, and is usually more faithful to the actual look of the physical book than the ePub is.
Because you can read the book on our site as soon as you have bought it, why would you want to download it? There are two reasons: First, you might want to read the book on your PC or Mac without going online. Second, you might want to load the book to your dedicated eBook reading device, such as your Nook or Sony. And, you very well might want to do both with the same book!
Before you can download eBooks, you have to prepare your PC to receive them. To do that, you obtain a copy of Adobe Digital Editions ("ADE"), which is free from Adobe at this Adobe website. Follow the prompts to install ADE on your computer from there, and be sure to answer "yes" to putting an icon for ADE on your desktop. When the ADE cownload completes, and you have "authorized" your computer to use ADE, you are now ready to download the one or more eBook(s) you have purchased from us (or to purchase and download them if you have not yet bought them). ADE will open and read both formats, the ePub and the PDF. In fact, you can download both, if both are offered, and see which one you prefer reading in ADE.
Return to OUR website and log in. Navigate to "My Google eBooks". Click on the download button. A popup will appear asking you if you wish to "run" or "save" the download file. Choose to "run" it. When you make this choice, ADE will open, a horizontal "thermometer" will appear within ADE indicating the book is downloading, and, when it finishes, you will see the cover of the book ready to read, because ADE will be in "read" mode at that point. Close your Internet browser unless you want to download more purchased books (or the other format of the same book, if both are offered). Change to "library" mode on ADE, which will be still open. Now you can see a left-hand pane with the names of all your "bookshelves", such as: Recently Read, Purchased, Borrowed, and All. And, when you click on the "All" or the "Purchased" bookshelf, you will see small icons representing the books you downloaded. Repeat the download process for all other books you have purchased from us and wish to download. You can now read them all using ADE, on your computer.
But, now, suppose you want to load an eBbook in your ADE library to your dedicated eReader, such as, say, your NookColor or Sony or Nook. Here's how: using the cable that came with your reader, connect one end to your reader, and connect the other end (the one with the rectangular plug on it) to a USB port on your computer. Many newer computers have USB ports right on their front panels, but on older ones you may have to hunt around for a USB port on the back of the machine. Having done that, open ADE on your computer. The first time you do this, ADE may ask you if you wish to "authorize" your device for eBooks. If so, answer yes to that. Your device will appear as a new "bookshelf", that was not there before on your list of bookshelves in ADE. Make sure you are in "library" mode (not "reading" mode) on ADE. Find the icon that represents the book you want to load to your device. With your mouse, drag the icon to the "bookshelf" that represents your reader in the left-hand pane of ADE, and "drop" it there. The ebook will load to your device! And, thereafter, your ebook will be in three places at once: still on our website in "the cloud" where you bought it; and on your computer, where you can read it with ADE; and, on your device, where you can read it with your device. You can switch around and read any part of the ebook from any one of the three copies.
Dedicated readers vary in their ability to read PDF format ebooks, but it has been our experience that PDF's are not as easy to read, and the readers do not have as many configurable options for display of PDF's as they do for ePub format. For example, our Nookcolor will open PDF formats for reading, but it is relatively difficult to get the type to display at a comfortable reading size. So, in our case, we generally load ePub format to our Nookcolor, although we can load both if we wish.
Next, close ADE. Double click on "My Computer" on your desktop, or use "Start" and choose "Computer" or "My Computer". In the left hand pane of the window that comes up, you will see the "drive" which represents your (still-connected!) reader. Right-click on this drive, and select "Eject" from the resulting pop-up. If you leave out this "eject" step, you may not be able to open the book loaded to your device. Now you physically disconnect your reader from your computer. Hunt around on your reader for your book. In some devices, notably the Nookcolor, you will find the book in "Digital Editions", a folder that is a subfolder of "My Files" folder, and not on the device's main screen.
If, after all this, or in any part of it, you get stuck, puhleeze!!!! come in to Bay Books and ask for help. We know this is very complicated, we know everybody is not a computer whiz, and we are willing, even eager, to help. Because, once you do one eBook successfully, we know you will return again and again to buy eBooks from us!
