Bundling Books

One of the annoying things about television is summarized by the immortal phrase "hundreds of channels and nothing on." One reason for this (though not the only one) is that channels are provided in bundles. For example Discovery Channel typically comes with a cadre of other channels like Discovery Health, the Military Channel, TLC and BBC America. If a cable provider, like AT&T Uverse, wants to provide Discovery Channel to its users, it must buy the bundle from Discovery Communications, Inc. Similar bundles exist from many outlets (for example the 30 ESPN channels you get).
However it is annoying to users because by and large they only want one or a few of the channels in a bundle, but they pay for all of them.
Virginia Postrel suggests digital books should be bundled in a similar manner, where a consumer must buy a bundle of books to get the one they want. This, she argues, will help buoy sales of less popular books:

Every book is indeed different, but that’s no excuse for charging more than the market will bear. And, at least for digital copies, there’s a way around the “every book is different” problem: bundling a lot of books together, charging a flat fee, and letting customers use whichever ones they like best.

How will this solve any problems? Why should a consumer be forced to pay for books they don't want? I can only see consumer irritation from this plan, the same way consumers hate forced buying bundles of television channels to get the few channels they actually will watch.


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