Reply #8: You can read plenty of books for free online right now

[ProgressiveEconomist]

Surf to http://www.ebrary.com to see some of the excellent technology that's available and already used by many public libraries, perhaps including your own public library. If you have a big-city library card, chances are all you have to do is log in to the website listed on it.

If not, there are several more obscure alternatives readily available. These may be the best:

From http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3565566 :

"A (Non-controversial) Alternative to Google Print

By Gary Price; November 21, 2005

Google Print has stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy, but another company has been offering online book search capabilities, with the blessings of publishers, for years. ebrary has been around since 1999. The company offers numerous services including one that lets you search and read over 20,000 in-copyright books for free. You pay only to print and copy text.

ebrary, like other services (NetLibrary, Books24x7, Safari Tech books spend a great deal of time marketing their services for licensing by libraries and the enterprise market. ebrary is no different and its fully featured search technology is very cool and powerful.

What makes these and other services different than Amazon's Search Inside the Book and Google Print is that they allow the user to read, annotate and print (in some cases) the full text of books. In most cases these are new, in-copyright books, that can be full text searched.

Shop ebrary

ebrary also offers Shop ebrary, a little known service that allows anyone to access and read (online) over 20,000 books from major publishers, sheet music titles and reports. Full text online access from Shop ebrary content is free. You pay only for what you print or copy. It's easy. ...