You might be aware that there are thousands of copyright free books available online for reading. (If not, see this recent post.) There are even many open source journal sites (as mentioned in an earlier post) and open courseware pages  (mentioned in yet another another post). But did you know that there are some sites that allow you to read the full text of relatively recent, popular fiction that is still under copyright and currently on sale? Some publishers view this as the equivalent of removing the shrink wrap in bookstores and allowing the user to leaf through the contents. The hope is that this will actually increase sales, because reading a book on a computer monitor is still an unsatisfactory experience for most people. Harper Collins makes available a small selection of books for online reading every month, including immensely popular works by Neil Gaiman, and Paul Coelho.

Another site, Baen Books , offers full access to a much larger collection, but in a more limited category – they specialize in Sci-Fi /Fantasy. The Baen library includes such luminaries of the genre as Larry Niven and Lois McMaster Bujold.