Important: Only users who have an entitlement to the book (purchase, rental) are able to use Book insights.
Book insights is a helpful reading companion that enhances the Google Play Books user experience. With Book insights, the user can:
- Generate a recap of what they've read so far when they use 'Catch me up'.
- Highlight a passage to ask questions and dive deeper into themes, context or characters.
- Enter questions about the book that they're reading or select from a list of in-context suggestions.
You can activate Book insights in two ways:
- Highlight specific text and select Book insights.
- At the top, from the lightbulb icon, turn on the feature.
With Book insights, you can:
- Get a recap of what you've read so far: To provide an overview that leads to your current page, click Catch me up. It can reorientate you as a reader if you have stepped away from the book. This helps you recall key plot points so that you don't have to re-read previous chapters.
- Highlight text and surface relevant question prompts: You can highlight a character's name, a place or a phrase. To help you better understand the plot, character or themes and generate a set of question prompts, select Book insights.
- Ask whatever question is on your mind: If you don't find a relevant question prompt, you can always ask your own in the 'Ask Play Books' box. Book insights is designed to give spoiler-free answers. It only references the text up to your current reading position. Responses are limited to a few paragraphs.
Tip: Users can't copy any text from the responses.
Publisher settings
At account level and book level, you can control the availability of the feature. The book-level setting takes precedence over the account-level setting.
Account-level control
You can find the account-level control under Catalogue > Advanced options > AI settings. When you set the account-level control, you can select the option below:
- Apply to all books (default setting): This enables or disables the feature for every book associated with your partner account that's currently eligible. Changes to the account-level setting may take up to 48 hours to take effect in the store.
- Tip: If the user has purchased a book with Book insights enabled, they can continue to use it.
Book-level control
You can find the book-level control under Book info > Settings > Advanced settings. This override setting determines your final experience for a specific title. To override the account-level setting for multiple books at a time, use the CSV upload template.
- Enable Book insights: Select whether to enable or disable Book insights for an individual title.
- Use account setting: Your default account-level setting governs this book's setting.
- Yes: To override your account setting and enable Book insights for this title, select Yes.
- No: To override your account setting and not allow Book insights for this title, select No.
- Tip: Users who purchased a book with Book insights enabled will continue to be able to use Book insights.
To determine your experience, the following table demonstrates how the two settings interact:
|
Account-level setting for Book insights |
Title-level setting for Book insights |
Your experience |
|
On |
Off |
Off for the specified titles, like no insights feature for the book in the consumption app |
|
Off |
On |
On for the specified titles |
Eligible books for Book insights
Even if a book is opted in, based on the book's language or format, some books may not be eligible for the feature. Currently, the feature is only available for English language titles in the .epub format.
Book insights and generative AI
This content may be generated or assisted by AI. While intended for informational or entertainment purposes, it's not a substitute for professional medical, legal or financial advice. Verify critical information independently, as AI may produce inaccurate details or biased perspectives.
- Generative AI is experimental and can make mistakes.
- Understand how AI is used: To answer questions about the book, our product uses AI. This means that AI creates the results that you find rather than humans directly create.
- Feedback: We encourage you to review AI-generated results. To help us improve the accuracy of the product:
- You can let us know how you feel about the feature with the 'Thumbs up' or 'Thumbs down' buttons.
- From the 'More' menu, submit detailed feedback.