Books published on the Internet are handy, but they aren't real books. You can't carry them round with you and flip through them and stick them in a guitar case. Books are objects over and above the text they contain. What publishing a book on the Internet does, if it's a book you really like, is make you want to get hold of a hard copy.

And all the evidence seems to be that it works that way.

Of course if you've got a book that's got two or three pages worth reading ,and the rest is padding, it might work the other way But I don't think books like that really deserve much protecting.