Google Play Books

Publishing terms

Formats

EPUB, PDF

Distribution

Google Play Books store, Google Books previews, Syndication partners

Territories

Publisher selects the countries to sell in; the higher revenue split applies in certain territories only

ISBN

Free ISBN supplied: NoAccepts your own ISBN: YesAn ISBN is not required to submit a book to Google Books or to sell one on Google Play. A book without one is assigned a Google identifier prefixed GGKEY, which Google states is used only internally — so it identifies the title inside Google and nowhere else. Either a 10- or 13-digit ISBN, or an EAN, is accepted.

Royalties

• 70% of list priceEbook revenue split in the higher-rate territoriesPaid on the List Price rather than the price the customer actually paid, so a Google-funded discount does not reduce it. Google’s help pages describe this as the rate for partners who accepted the 2019 Terms of Service, applying in 60-plus countries including the US, UK, Canada, Australia and most of Europe.
• 52% of list priceStandard ebook revenue splitThe standard split under clause 5.1 of the agreement. Google’s help pages present it as the default for partners who never accepted the 2019 terms, and as the continuing rate in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Fees

• Selling on Google Play — freeGoogle states there is no cost to sell books on Google Play, and no fees related to the revenue split. Delivering titles is at the publisher’s expense, including any technical support needed to transfer them.

Payment schedule

The agreement and the help pages disagree, and the agreement governs. Clause 5.2 says Google pays no more than 60 days after the end of the calendar month in which revenue was received, and is not obliged to pay at all while the earned balance is under $100 USD. The help pages describe payment on the 15th of each month above a payment-profile threshold of about $1 by bank transfer or $100 by wire. On termination the earned balance is paid within 90 days, with a $1 floor.

Rights & privacy

Manuscript upload

Required

Cloud storage

Yes

Account required

Yes

AI features

Built into the service

AI training on your work

The terms are unclearNeither agreement mentions AI, machine learning or training anywhere — but the silence here is louder than KDP’s, because of how the licence is scoped. Clause 3.1 authorises Google to copy, reproduce, display, adapt, use, communicate and make the content available to the public, in whole or in part, “as part of and/or through the Google Services (or any of them)” — and Google Services is defined as any products, services or technology “provided by or being developed by or on behalf of Google or any Google Affiliate from time to time”. A licence bounded by a definition that expressly reaches technology not yet built does not exclude much. Clause 3.1(k) adds use for testing. Separately and concretely, Book insights is a generative-AI reading companion that works on the book’s text to produce recaps and answer readers’ questions; it covers English EPUB titles, readers cannot copy text out of its responses, and it can be switched off at account or title level — but the default is “Apply to all books”, so it is on until you turn it off. A generative feature reading a book is a different claim from a model being trained on it. The first is documented; the second is neither promised nor ruled out.

Content licence

Worldwide and non-exclusive, and no intellectual property changes hands — clause 3.9 is explicit that neither party acquires rights in the other’s. Within that, the grant is wide. Google may render, transcode and adapt the content, index it, store copies on its servers, build Content Excerpt Pages from it, and make it available to the public in whole or in part through any of the Google Services. Those rights extend to Google’s affiliates, to syndication partners for previews, and to third parties in connection with exercising them. Two clauses deserve attention on the way in: clause 2.3 states plainly that Google will not return any title you deliver, and clause 3.1(i) gives readers perpetual, irrevocable rights to what they bought, expressly surviving termination. A separate opt-in agreement covers auto-narrated audiobooks, under which Google generates synthetic narration from the ebook; the publisher can download a copy of the result, but once an auto-narrated audiobook is withdrawn it may not be sold anywhere else.

Deletion

Withdrawal is straightforward and deletion is not the same thing. A publisher can remove any title from future sales in the Partner Account at any time, and can terminate the whole agreement on 30 days’ notice at its absolute discretion. What that does not do is get the file back: clause 2.3 says Google will not return delivered titles, and readers who have already bought keep perpetual access. At the account level Google’s privacy policy offers genuinely granular deletion — per service, per product, per item, or the whole account — but that governs personal information rather than supplied book files.

Export

Nothing is locked in commercially: the appointment is non-exclusive, titles can be withdrawn from sale at will, and the agreement ends on 30 days’ notice. Google Takeout is a real export at the Google Account level. What is missing is any route back for the publishing catalogue itself — the delivered files are expressly not returned, and no bulk export of titles, metadata and full sales history is documented.

Policy reviewed 4 September 2026