"It's one-sided agreement to scan the work without permission from the author. It is illegal to enjoy the writer's work in the name of knowledge sharing," said Zhang, whose books have been scanned by Google.

Chen Cun, another well-known Chinese writer who lives in Shanghai, said Google is "day-dreaming" if it wants to buy copyright from him for $60.

"The price should be set by both sides. It is impossible to buy an object with your bid only," he said.

Google Books is planning to turn millions of books into electronic literature available online.

Google's head of Print Content Partnerships in Britain, Santiago de la Mora, earlier said that Google is solving one of the big problems in the print world - that some books are pretty much dead in the sense that hard copies can no longer be found.

"We're bringing these books back to life, making them more visible to 1.8 billion Internet users in a very controlled way," de la Mora said.

However, Google Books is facing big legal problems in the US, Europe and elsewhere around the globe over the issue of copyrights.