That is because of copyright law, which, if anything, will be growing stricter toward the Internet under legislation now proposed on Capitol Hill. F or obvious reasons, publishers and writers normally cannot give away books for free and are worried about digital piracy. If present trends continue, children in poorer school districts may be teased with references to books, but in most cases not be able to see the actual texts. The logical solution is to provide for proper funding mechanisms to spread books around while fairly compensating writers and publishers. Best-sellers are rare.
Content suffers because compensation is typically so low.
Even writers employed in other jobs find themselves spending less time on individual books than they could if rewards were fairer. The Internet alone will not preserve our nation's history and literary heritage. Resources come and go. Publishers both thrive and die. Thousands of sites, some reliable, some not, make up the World Wide Web.