I wonder what an electronic book reader would look like if Apple designed it?

I wonder what an electronic book reader would look like if Apple designed it?

Tribes author Seth Godin has an interesting take on free content and the publishing industry:

[Publishers] are not in the printing business. [They are] in the business of leveraging the big ideas authors have.  … The market doesn’t care a whit about maintaining [the publishing] industry. The lesson from Napster and iTunes is that there’s even MORE music than there was before. What got hurt was Tower and the guys in the suits and the unlimited budgets for groupies and drugs. The music will keep coming. Same thing is true with books. So [they] can decide to hassle [their] readers (oh, I mean [their] customers) and [then] decide that a book on a Kindle SHOULD cost $15 because it replaces a $15 book, and if [they] do, we (the readers) will just walk away.

I’m also walking away if a Kindle or eReader costs the same as a notebook. I can buy eight hardcover books at full price for the cost of a Kindle. If there is no price break, then where is the point at which I will recoup the original outlay? With an iPod, I can cheaply load it up with music from CDs, iTunes, and hither and yon.