Why hasn’t this happened yet!? I mean, really I know why–it was more of a rhetorical-throw-hands-in-the-air type of question.
iTunes does the exact same thing for movies. Paying $9.99–15.99 for digital books sounds expensive to a lot of people (myself included). I would love to see the iBooks store implement a 30 day rental period for a book. It would give you enough flexibility to finish the book leisurely and could be protected by the same style of DRM that Apple uses for its movie rentals. This could be brilliant–kind of like a public library, where you pay up front, instead of through taxes.
Granted, the publishers would likely be hesitant, but I think there’s a large percentage of the e-book market that thinks the price is too high. I wonder if a rental pricing system might capture the portion of the market that would otherwise just wait until their local library picked up the book.
