Google's Gemini Notebook now reads your books
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- Gemini Notebook launched "Expert Intelligence," letting users ask questions, generate plans, infographics, and AI podcasts from purchased Google Play Books.
- More than 100,000 titles from Penguin Random House, Johns Hopkins University Press, Macmillan Publishers, O'Reilly Media, and others support the feature at launch.
- Google partnered with 15 authors — including Michael Pollan, Kim Scott, Steven Pinker, and Jennifer Wallace — on "Featured Notebooks" with intro letters and custom source material.
- Steven Johnson, Google Labs editorial director, demonstrated generating a recipe book from Pollan's "Food Rules" and applying "Radical Candor" to a difficult-employee-conversation prompt.
- Access protections keep shared notebooks book-blind for non-purchasers — sources are listed but clicking routes users to Google Play Books to buy the title.
- Google plans to expand Expert Intelligence into AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, and later support scholarly articles, magazines, and newspapers.
Why it matters: Google built a direct discovery-to-purchase funnel into its AI assistant: non-owners who click a shared notebook's book source get routed to Google Play Books to buy. With 100,000+ titles and named author collaborations, Johnson said the company wants "new revenue possibilities for authors and publishers" alongside the new AI workflow.
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