Many publishers and authors will give access to chapters from their books and others will allow for the complete publications to be read online or to be downloaded as a PDF. Google also hosts a vast library of out of copyright publications, which are all available for full viewing and download as PDF.

The Google Books partner program is designed for publishers to host their content online. The hosting service is free for partial or full viewing, but a commission is charged for selling the full publication.

Reportedly, somewhere in the order of 70% of new books acquired in Japan are downloaded from the web as eBooks with a market value of around USD10 million. Emerging hardware, such as the Kindle is being specifically designed to meet demand.