You can now load full Google Play Books into Gemini Notebook with ‘Expert Intelligence’

When Google rebranded NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook earlier this summer, it signaled a much bigger vision for the AI-powered research platform. While users have loved uploading PDFs, web links, YouTube videos, and Google Docs to ground their research, one massive source of human knowledge was always missing: full, published books. And now, Google is taking a huge step to fix that.

According to a new post over at News from Google, Google is launching Expert Intelligence across Gemini Notebook to close this research gap.

This new initiative allows you to import eligible ebooks you’ve purchased through Google Play Books directly into your notebooks as grounded sources, letting you cross-examine bestselling authors alongside your own notes, research, and daily workflow.

How Expert Intelligence works with Google Play Books

Instead of relying on broad, ungrounded web summaries, Expert Intelligence allows Gemini Notebook to query the exact text of authoritative books with direct source citations. If you own an eligible title in Google Play Books, you can simply add it straight to your sources list inside your notebook.

From there, you can generate the platform’s signature Audio Overviews, interactive study quizzes, Mind Maps, and visual infographics grounded directly in the book’s core concepts.

The real superpower comes from pairing an author’s published framework with your own personal context and uploaded files. For instance, a manager can upload team meeting notes alongside Kim Scott’s Radical Candor to prepare for tough performance reviews; or a parent can snap a photo of their fridge ingredients and ask Gemini Notebook to build a healthy weekly meal plan based on the rules in Michael Pollan’s Food Rules.

100,000+ books at launch with publisher backing

To build this ethically, Google partnered directly with major publishing houses including Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury, O’Reilly Media, De Gruyter Brill, and Johns Hopkins University Press; and they are launching with over 100,000 supported titles on day one.

They’ve also worked with more than 15 bestselling authors, including Steven Pinker, Michael Pollan, and Jennifer Wallace, to release curated Featured Notebooks that pair their published work with supplemental artifacts, custom study tools, and deeper research sources.

Built-in ownership controls

Google and its publishing partners built specific friction controls into the system, too, and they are pretty clear and straightforward:

• You must own the ebook on Google Play Books to interact with it inside a notebook.
• If you share a collaborative notebook containing an Expert Intelligence book, your collaborators will be prompted to purchase their own copy on Google Play Books before they can query that specific source.

You can check if any book supports the integration by browsing Google Play Books and looking for the Gemini Notebook badge under the title’s “Tools” menu. For users in the U.S., Google is even offering a free eligible book through the portal while supplies last to test out the integration.

Coming to the Gemini App and Search

While this capability is kicking off inside Gemini Notebook, Google confirmed that Expert Intelligence will expand to the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search in the near future. Google also plans to expand beyond ebooks to include third-party subscriptions, academic textbooks, and enterprise business research reports.

Being able to seamlessly blend published literature with your own personal notes and sources turns Gemini Notebook into an even more indispensable research tool for all sorts of users, and it’s a tool that seems to only get better with each passing upgrade.