Hello fellow wikipedians, these instructions on how to liberate old Google Books come as requested by several awesome people. If this works for you, please add your book liberated onto the table on this page. I have liberated books thrice, the most recent one being brought to the attention of many other wikipedians, including the senior editor of The Signpost. I hope you can find this guide straightforward enough to use successfully:
Know your stuff
editThe important thing for being able to convince Google that they should release the full book is knowing your stuff. This includes (a the basic book information and (b the copyright laws for the country it was published in. I'll explain B first.
The entire thing we are doing when using my trick is playing with copyright laws. If a book is within copyright, any actions that release a full copy freely would be piracy. Piracy is bad, blah blah blah. What I am doing here is NOT piracy, but it is revolving around copyright. What I am doing IS convincing Google that the book is not within copyright, which means that they have no legal reason to avoid releasing it, and ethical reasons for releasing it. To do that, you must know the copyright laws that you are tangling with. I find that there is a great review of copyright laws available by searching "Copyright law of [country]", for example Copyright law of the United Kingdom. Specific laws in the UK can be found under Copyright law of the United Kingdom#Copyright term, where it is stated that as of 1995, all copyrighted works will remain copyrighted for the authors lifetime plus 70 years. Thus, anything first published in the UK, and the author being deceased before January 1st, 1946, is within the public domain. Any works that are in the public domain are now eligible for my Google Books trick.
Point B is the main thing you need to know, but once you are confident with your knowledge of copyright you should review the basic book information you need to determine if the copyright is expired. Like I said above, the country the book was first published in is most important, followed by the authors birth and death dates. Of note are that there are different laws regarding group works, and anonymous works, and these should be reviewed separately on a case-by-case basis.
Now for the trick
editThe first few steps are the most important in determining if the book you want can be fully released. If, as stated above, the book is no longer in copyright, then you need to determine if Google Books actually has the full book. Often, this can be determined by whether or not the book has a "snippet view" available, like this random book I found. If you are able to see actual complete pages, then the book is either already fully released, or Google got permission from the publisher to release it in "preview" mode, and some pages are excluded. In either of those cases, there is nothing you can do but read the book. However, if, like the linked book, it is available in snippet view, and in the public domain, I will now show you where things get interesting.
Once on the book page, type in the search bar underneath the "From inside the book" header, and search what you typed. Honestly, you can search whatever you want, I personally like to search "stuff", because the search term does not matter, as long as a page shows up. Once you have made a page(s) appear, look at the text just below the final page. It should read "Where's the rest of this book?", and clicking on it is what you want to do. Now you are sent to a Google support page, titled "Why some books aren't available in full view". Don't bother reading the "Partner agreements" paragraph, and skip right ahead to the "Note" bulletin. Read it if you like, but honestly I have never personally experience Google reviewing a book without a reader suggestion, which is where we all start to do stuff other that clicking links. You should see where I am going if you read that paragraph, and yes, you do follow the "ask us to review it" link.
Now, input your name and email. Be-warned, if you have a gaelic first name that start's with "i" like me, Google Books will most likely begin your name with "L" when they get back to you. By now, you all should know to input the required information, which, besides email and first name, includes book url, the subject of your email, and your request. Simply copy-pasting the book url is enough, you don't need to remove the unwanted search terms if you don't care. For the "Categorize your issue", I would recommend "i have a question regarding the viewability of the book" if you're trying to do what I am informing the populous of here. Now for what you learned going through the "Know your stuff" section above, put together your reasoned argument that "said book is PD because in [country] copyright extends til whatever time, and that time has passed" (please don't copy-paste what I wrote here, thats just a basic layout for you to extend a lot on). All you have to do next is hit the big blue "Submit" button.
It will take approximately one week for Google Books to get back to you, but often less than that. If they accept your argument and make the book fully available, hurray, if not, I hope they gave a good counterpoint to why the book cannot be released. Thank you for going through this immense wall of text, and good luck with getting your Google Book open for all. Remember, comment on the talk page with suggestions or experiences. IJReid discuss 02:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)