(A special thanks to Steve Weber’s “Plug Your Book” blog for sharing this information!)

Here are some quotes from the  HarperCollins Website:

“In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine…

The idea is to give readers the opportunity to sample the books online in the same way that prospective buyers can flip through books in a bookstore…

The free electronic editions would be available only for one month, and readers would not be able to download them to laptops or to an electronic reader like Kindle from Amazon.com. The print function will also be disable…

There is evidence that readers still buy books even if they can get the content free on the Web…

I believe that they are not going to go beyond 20 or 30 pages” when reading on the Internet…

HarperCollins will also begin offering 20 percent of some books two weeks before the hardcover editions go on sale.

What other publishing company is doing the same or similar?