Experts' Expert: How to read Google Books on an iPhone

The always helpful and refreshingly clear J.D. Biersdorfer — who wear at least two hats that I know of, one being her public face as the Gadgetwise Q&A columnist for the New York Times, the other staff editor at the paper — offered a particularly useful tutorial in Thursday's paper; the Q&A follows.

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Q. I know Apple has its own e-book store, but can I download and read the free stuff from Google Books on an iPhone, or do I need an Android phone?

A. You do not need an Android device to get e-books from the Google Play store. You just need the Google Play Books app installed on your iPhone and a Google account, both of which are free. The Google Play Books app is available in Apple's App Store and you can sign up for a Google account on the Web, or through the books app.

Unlike Apple's own iBooks app and online iBookstore, you cannot browse and buy books directly through the Google Play Books app. To get new e-books on your phone, open the iPhone’s Safari Web browser and go to this site. From here, you can browse Google's collection and select the books (free or paid) you want to download and read on your phone. After you log into the Web store with your Google account, your books appear in the Google Play Books app on the iPhone.

Google has full instructions for using its books app here. You can get books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble's e-book stores on the Web with the Kindle and Nook apps for iPhone, which are also available free in the App Store.