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Shop for a Book
In the Play Books home screen, tap the Shop icon shown in the upper-right area of the screen shown in Figure 2. The Google Play Books screen opens, as shown in Figure 4.
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Figure 4 The Books page in the Google Play Store displays featured books as tiles.
The Featured section appears by default so you can see the books Google Play is promoting currently. You can swipe up and down the page to view all the tiles in the section. If you want to view a list of all the book categories, swipe from right to left to view the Categories list shown in Figure 5.
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Figure 5 A list of categories appears on the left side of the screen.
View the entire list of categories by swiping up and down the list. When you find a category you want, tap the category, and a list of featured books in that category appears in the Featured section. Within each category, you can also swipe from left to right to view subcategories, such as the Hardware subcategory within the Computers & Internet category. Tap the Back icon in the Notification bar to return to the main Books page. You'll learn how to view and download a book later in this article.
Within the main Books page, you can swipe from right to left to view the Top Selling, New Arrivals in Fiction, New Arrivals in Nonfiction, and Top Free sections. You can download a number of free classic books at no charge in the Top Free section shown in Figure 6.
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Figure 6 The Top Free section allows you to download classic literary works at no charge.
Swipe upward on the page to view all the books in the Top Free section. Each book appears in its own tile and contains a small image of the book cover, the name of the book, the author name(s), the average reviews given by other readers (1 is best; 5 is worst), and the price of the book (in this case, Free). If you've already purchased the book, the price is Purchased instead of Free.
When you find the book you want to download, tap the book tile in the list. The book description screen appears as shown in Figure 7.
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Figure 7 The book description screen for the Alexis de Tocqueville book Democracy in America displays.
Tap Open to open the book in Play Reader. When you tap the center of the screen and then tap the Back icon in the menu bar, the downloaded book appears on the Play Books home page. If you have already purchased the book, then you can start reading it by tapping the Read button in the description screen.
Note that if the book requires you to pay to download and read it, then you must tap the blue payment button that appears underneath the book cover. The payment window opens, shows you the credit card you'll use for the transaction, and asks you to tap the I Agree to the Payments for Google Play Terms of Service check box. After you tap the check box to indicate your agreement, tap the Accept & Buy button to purchase the book and start reading it in the Play Books app.
If there is a free sample that you can download and read before you buy the entire book, tap the Free Sample button. The sample will load in the Play Books app so you can read it. When you reach the end of the sample, a window appears that informs you that you've finished your free sample and asks whether you want to buy the book or share the book with others. You can also view a list of related books so you can view more information about a book when you tap the book title in the list.