Online bookstores are becoming increasingly common throughout the internet. These bookstores allow either the order of paper copies of books or a downloadable version (usually in a protected PDF format). Since books are effectively just information stored on paper pages, they are ideal for information exchange on the internet. Sending and receiving the contents of an encyclopaedia or piece of fiction can be achieved easily and rapidly.

While Online Bookstores provide the benefits that most online shopping websites offer, like comfort of choice, rapid selection and longer opening hours, the medium of books can also benefit from regular purchase plans. Many of us purchase subscriptions or regular editions of magazines or novels. Online bookstores are able to cater for this rapidly by allowing a customer to easily set up and view a regular subscription plan via the internet. This also allows the customer to alter details like the delivery date, length of subscription or even cancellation with ease and at any convenient time.

One side affect of the growing number of online bookstores and demand for rapid delivery of purchased items, is the growing influence of downloadable books. These will usually be either coded or protected files. Coded online books will require a special key application or code to translate the text of the book into a readable format. Normally this key can only be used a limited number of times or even just a single time, after which the book is contained in a protected format (this is to prevent the translating of copies of the original). A protected format is a form that cannot be edited and will only allow the customer to view the contents of the document (also known as read only). Normally these documents will also water stamp any copies to show them as fraudulent copies. Some online bookstores have sufficient confidence in protected forms of online books that they do not feel the need to code the text and send a separate translation key.

One of the major problems an online bookstore faces with a downloadable format is the further distribution of its copyright information. As technological applications and knowledge improves, the ability to bypass these copyright protection methods becomes more common. And this concern is also one of main reasons many firms have been hesitant in promoting and implementing the idea of an online bookstore with this form of product. But as our daily use of the internet increases and more and more commercial sales are being done online, these same bookstore firms are dawning to the realisation that the benefits of an online bookstore that provides downloadable books outweighs the risks. Some of the more notable online bookstores can be found at booksense.com (the American Booksellers Association online bookstore branch) and Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Because of the concern of copyright, many of these bookstores only offer their products in paper form and not digital form.

So until more firms become confident in the software for document protection and more of us prefer to store our library on a hard disk or DVD rather than in book stacks, it seems the common extent of an online bookstore will be the organisation, purchase and delivery of paper based books much like most other online shopping websites.