Since he got his iPad last summer, Steve Nagle has gotten used to downloading the latest must-reads from Amazon.com. But last week, he made a switch. Instead of going to his old standby site, Nagle downloaded "Freedom," the new Jonathan Franzen novel, from www.bookshelfwinona.com, owned by the Book Shelf, a small, brick-fronted bookstore in his hometown of Winona, Minn.

Nagle was able to shop locally for his e-book because of a new partnership between Google and the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a trade group for independent booksellers. As of Dec. 6, ABA-member bookshops can sell Google e-books from their own websites and claim a piece of the retail pie normally reserved for the big boys of e-book selling: Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple.

Before the agreement, indie booksellers were able to offer e-book downloads only from Ingram Digital, a limited, 250,000-book catalog. In addition to having a fraction of Google's offerings, the catalog was in a format that some e-book readers found unwieldy, said Chris Livingston, owner of the Book Shelf.

"Honestly, before this, I was embarrassed to direct people to our site for e-book buying," Livingston said.

Now, ABA members have access to a Google catalog that includes millions of titles from more than 4,000 publishers. Plus, all of the titles are sold under an "agency" pricing model, which means that the price is the same if you buy the book through an independent or from Google's own e-bookstore.

And, because bookstores can earn between 40 and 46 percent of the total e-book price, the deal could be a boon for independents, said Jim Malody, webmaster at the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul.

But there are some drawbacks.

Getting the word out has been an issue, said Leslie Hakala, the owner of the Best of Times Bookstore in Red Wing, Minn. Hakala put an ad in the Red Wing Republican Eagle boasting about the service, but she hasn't registered a single e-book sale -- other than from herself. Some bookstore owners have tried posting the new deal on Facebook or putting signs up in their stores.

And technical difficulties have kept some independent bookstores from signing on. Micawber's Bookstore in St. Paul and Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Uptown Minneapolis are ABA-member bookstores, but they don't use the ABA's e-commerce Web system. That effectively cuts them out of the Google eBooks program, at least for now.

Even independents that have signed on are treading cautiously.

"I love that we're selling e-books, but please don't ask me anything about e-readers," said Charlie Leonard, owner of the Bookcase of Wayzata. "I don't have one, and I really don't have a clue how it works."

Alyssa Ford • 612-673-4116