Na. It has a point. Say your a student doing a medical research paper. You wouldn't want to buy Principles of Internal Medicine Textbook for $250 When you can buy chapter 5 for a couple bucks and finish your paper. It could be very useful for people to buy content rich chapters rather than the whole book. You won;t see me doing it tho'.
Agreed, this is a great idea. Often times I just need a small section of a book for research purposes. Normally a book like this doesnt cover the whole topic throughout the book, thus it is only delegated for a few pages or even maybe a chapter. Great idea. I'll be using it.
It also depends on the book being kept where it belongs. Lazy library workers and devious students (who hide the book in another location to ensure they can always get it) can make this tricky.
This is an awesome idea; small schools with 15 students trying to grab all the sources on EMily Dickinson that they can leads to no ED books in the bibliotech.
If you're not sure if you're going to like a book, only buy part of it. If it's lame, you don't have to pay for the rest. Not a bad idea.