Search the book holdings list at your public or university library, where many abstracts are available. For example, at Northern Illinois University’s Founders Memorial Library, by searching for a book title and then clicking on the title itself, patrons can see publication information. By then clicking on “Click for more information on this title,” a summary is available (See Source 1).
Find abstracts at major book selling sites like amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. Book sellers want to provide this information because it helps them to sell the book, and they encourage you to read as many summaries as you like. At Amazon, you can look inside the book to sample it, see the back cover summary, and view key passages or famous phrases, not to mention customer reviews that contain summary material. At barnesandnoble.com, doing a title search and then clicking on the title brings up summaries and reviews.
Search schvoong.com, which publishes summaries and pays for them through advertising. Summary writers submit their work and earn a percentage of the revenue generated by the ads. The summary quality varies, but readers can rate them, so reading only highly-rated material ensures that what you read is accurate.
Sign up for free trial periods at pay summary sites. Bizsum.com’s free one month trial lets you receive summaries of key business-related books. The summaries are more detailed than at the above free sites and satisfying as stand-alone works. The yearly subscription fee after that is $69.95, for which you will receive 52 summaries targeted to business readers.
Search sparknotes.com for free literary plot summaries of whole books or chapter by chapter. Analysis is also available. A similar source is litsum.com.
View fan sites for abstracts. Fans of various authors often maintain elaborate webpages that include summaries of the writer’s works. The better fan sites can be found by doing a Google search using the author’s name and the search term “bibliography.” For example, this search strategy for Richard Brautigan brings up www.brautigan.net, which provides summaries of his works.