Teachers can share books from Google Play Books with students through Google Classroom.
When teachers share a book, students can:
- Read the book on a computer, tablet or phone.
- Highlight text and take notes in the book.
- Organise notes into collections.
- Complete assignments.
What you need to get started
To use the add-on:
- Your organisation must have the Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Google Workspace for Education Plus. Learn more about Google for Education.
- Your administrators must turn on Google Books service for students and teachers, as well as Play Store service and Google Pay service for teachers only. Learn how to control Classroom access.
- Your administrators must install the Google Play Books add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace.
This option is only available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Teachers and students must be in the same country. More countries may be available in the future.
Share books with students
Purchase books for groupsImportant: The teacher or administrator who purchases the books must be in the same country as the students who read the books.
- On your computer, go to play.google.com/store/books.
- Sign in with the account that you use for school.
- Find the book that you want to buy.
- On the book detail page, select Buy for groups.
- Choose how many books to buy:
- If the book has no charge, there’s no limit on how many copies you can get if your account belongs to a Workspace for Education K-12 school.
- If the book has a price, you can buy 10 copies at a time. To buy more than 10, make another purchase.
- To purchase more than 100 copies, fill in this form. Include the book's title, a link to the book on Google Play, the number of copies that you need and your Classroom account.
- Complete your purchase.
- On your computer, go to your Play Books library.
- From 'Your inventory', select the book that you want to share.
- Click More Manage.
- Enter an email address. You can share the book with individuals or a group.
- Click Done.
To add managers to multiple books at once:
- Select all the books.
- At the top right, click Add managers.
Tip: After you authorise a book, teachers can add the book to Google Classroom assignments.
Important: Only staff members who are authorised to share a book can add it to an assignment.
- Go to classroom.google.com.
- Click the class Classwork.
- At the top, click Create Assignment.
- At the bottom right, under 'Add-ons', select Google Play Books.
- Select the book that you want to add to the assignment.
- At the top right, click Add.
Tip: Students can find the book for the assignment in Google Classroom. They have to click the book to claim the title. The book then appears in the student's Play Books library.
Important: Books with no charge have no licence limit. Designated redemption link recipients (must be Google Accounts or Google Groups).
- On your computer, go to play.google.com/books.
- From 'Your inventory', select the book that you want to share.
- Click More Create link to give copies.
- Add individuals or groups that you want to share the book with.
- Click Create link Copy link.
- Send the link to the individuals or groups.
Clicking on the link will use a licence to the book, and the number of available licences in 'Your inventory' will automatically be reduced. The use of a link cannot be undone. We recommend using care when sending books to others, including verifying the recipient’s contact information before sharing a link.
- On your computer, go to play.google.com/books.
- From 'Your inventory', select the book for which you want to view the history.
- Click More View history.
Tip: If all licences have been redeemed, the book will be greyed out and inactive in the licence history window.
For more help with the Play Books add-on in Google Classroom, contact us.