I think that works just great if Patient Zero is you. There's one person with a demonstrated desire to get this project going, and there's one person in your scenario upon whom the lion's share of effort is heaped. Make those two individuals into one individual and I'll bet things happen. COMPLETE OTHER THOUGHT Just about everything I've done for bl00sreviews was an audiobook. It's child's play to crack those down to an m4a that can be played by anything. I could also just distribute the bl00sreviews books far and wide without any postage or international boundaries coming into play, and as bl00sreviews was kind of the patient zero for this endeavor, it dovetails.
I like it. The epidemiology of literary gifting. I take your point about digital, and infinite distribution rules, but in this case I'm drawn to the idea of dirty, massy matter traipsing the world and picking up the oils from Hubski fingers like an international Name Of The Rose without the poison or the murder. When the singularity uplifts us all into a silicon dream, the books will be left behind, their pages curling in the almost absent wind.