The initial catalog covers more than 100,000 ebooks from Penguin Random House, Macmillan Publishers, O'Reilly Media, Bloomsbury, De Gruyter Brill and Johns Hopkins University Press.
Google is also working with more than 15 bestselling authors, including Steven Pinker, Michael Pollan and Jennifer Wallace, on Featured Notebooks containing additional material related to their books. The feature is available now through Gemini Notebook.
From Ebook to Gemini Source
Users can add an eligible Google Play ebook to a notebook and query its contents directly. Gemini can generate answers grounded in the book and use it alongside other notebook sources.
Supported uses include:
- questions and source-grounded answers;
- cross-source analysis;
- study guides and quizzes;
- Audio Overviews;
- infographics;
- mind maps.
Books can be combined with PDFs, websites, videos, images and personal documents. Google demonstrates the feature with Kim Scott's Radical Candor: users can combine the book with workplace information to prepare for an employee conversation.
Another example pairs Michael Pollan's Food Rules with a photo of food available in a refrigerator. Gemini uses both sources to generate a meal plan based on the book's principles.
The system therefore allows a book's framework to be applied to information that was never part of the original publication.
Access Is Tied to the Google Play Purchase
Users must own an eligible ebook through Google Play Books to use it as an Expert Intelligence source. A physical copy does not qualify. Books manually uploaded to a Google Play Books library are also excluded.
The ownership requirement remains in shared notebooks. If a notebook contains a protected book, collaborators cannot query that source unless they own their own eligible Google Play Books copy.
This prevents one purchase from providing AI access to the underlying book for every user of a shared notebook.
Only Selected English-Language Titles Are Supported
The initial release does not cover the entire Google Play Books catalog. Google currently supports selected English-language ebooks from publishers participating in the program.
Compatible titles display a Tools badge on their Google Play Books page. Gemini Notebook appears as an option when the book is eligible. Previously purchased titles can qualify, but the Google account used for Gemini Notebook must match the account that owns the ebook.
Books are imported through:
Add Sources → Play Books → select eligible titles → Add Sources.
Unsupported titles are shown but greyed out.
O'Reilly Books Turn Into Technical Reference Sources
O'Reilly Media's participation gives Expert Intelligence an immediate professional use case.
Its catalog includes programming, software architecture, cloud infrastructure, AI, data science and engineering titles. Eligible books from that catalog can be queried alongside a user's technical documentation and other Notebook sources.
Instead of manually locating information across several books, a user can query multiple sources and ask Gemini to synthesize the relevant material.
Academic and specialist publishers in the initial group, including Johns Hopkins University Press and De Gruyter Brill, extend the same model beyond consumer ebooks.
Business Reports and Subscriptions Are Next
Google plans to expand Expert Intelligence to third-party subscriptions, business research reports, and textbooks.
The company also intends to make Expert Intelligence content available outside Gemini Notebook through the Gemini app and AI Mode in Google Search.
Google has not announced release dates for those integrations. Business research could substantially expand the use case. A notebook could combine a licensed industry report with company documents, spreadsheets, research notes, and other paid publications, allowing Gemini to analyze them as a common source set.
Google Is Linking AI Access to Content Ownership
Expert Intelligence introduces a simple commercial structure:
buy the content → unlock it as a Gemini source.
The model differs from giving an AI system unrestricted access to publisher content. Ownership controls remain attached to the source, including when notebooks are shared.
For publishers, that means AI functionality can be attached to individual ebook sales rather than replacing the purchase.
It also adds functionality specific to Google Play Books. An eligible title purchased through Google's store is no longer only an ebook; it can also become a persistent source inside Gemini Notebook.
The initial rollout provides the core infrastructure: 100,000+ books, six named publishing groups, 15+ participating bestselling authors, purchase-based access controls and cross-source analysis inside Gemini Notebook.
Extending the same architecture to paid research reports and subscriptions would move Expert Intelligence beyond books and into professional information services.
