Well, I'm sure it'll be a shock, but
I like the idea.
Another thing that someone previously mentioned as a drawback to the SD card idea was concern about SD cards not being around for the long term. I think that if we decided to make them the basis of books in some arrangement like this one, then they'd be around pretty much indefinately. The reason I think that is that print has supposedly been dead for a couple of decades now, and yet it still appears everywhere, go figure.
BTW I think that if the Pub industry decided they wanted them, 1~2 MB SD cards could be cranked out
real cheap. Think about it: if Random House (for example) called up Lexar (for example) and said, "Hey, we want half a million 2 MB SD cards, and we'll want more again soon, what can you do for us?" I think Lexar would find a way to be accomodating. Having worked in the semiconductor industry, I know that smaller, simpler the devices mean that more can be made at the same time, which translates to lower cost per unit (once it's tooled up, of course).
Given really small capacity SD cards You could buy a stack of them at the local B&M (brick and morter) bookstore and use them 1 per book for your reading. The B&M could put in machines to download books onto the cards right there in the store for that matter.
It's just like anything else, it could work pretty, if enough folks got behind it. (shrug)