[swombat]

This makes the book publishers' dilemna much simpler than the music publishers'. 99.99% of people don't read more than 30 books a month - though people might sample more different books and be more willing to drop books they didn't like, on a flat fee.

So what they should do is offer a $30/m for 30 books a month subscription. I'd be perfectly willing to pay that for access to their entire library, with the ability to at most read through 30 books per month. Another way to do it would be per page, so that you can sample many different books... e.g. 10000 pages for $30/m (assuming about 300 pages per book on average).

I would buy that in a heartbeat. I'd still buy physical books, but only those I want to own. Meanwhile, whoever's pulled this thing together gets a solid yearly income of $360 from me - much more than they get from all but the heaviest readers today.