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Originally Posted by benn600
A friend of mine was laughing at my decision to buy the Reader. She reads a lot--a handful of books a month. She was telling me the gets them at the library...lol. So great, not only do I start up with a $350 charge, but I have to buy tons of books then, too! I wish there was a way to rent books for the Sony Reader, either for free (like a library lets you do!!!) or for a small monthly fee, say $7 per month for all the books you can read. Brand new books could cost the full amount and not be offered part of the all-you-can eat bundle until it has been released for a while.
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There are a couple of library-like options. Project Gutenberg has thousands of classic, out-of-copyright books, many of which are available from manybooks.net or in enhanced versions on the content forum here. These are all free.
If you like science fiction, Baen offers a free library of 50+ electronic books (and are adding 2-3 new books a month this year), as well as offering webscriptions (buy 6 new books a month for $15) and quite reasonable prices on individual books downloads ($6 for the electronic version when the book is published in hardcover).
Incidentally, free isn't always free; the library is supported by tax dollars as a public service -- ebook publishers and providers have to try to make a profit.
Whether Baen's e-publishing model will catch on in the industry is obviously an open question, but PG appears to be here to stay (and if you enjoy their texts, I'd highly recommend signing up as a volunteer proof-reader at distributed proofreaders and give something back if you'd rather provide some time than money).
Cheers,
ScS