The CD medium offers possibilities for publishing written books that overcomes all the complications required for printing books on paper. Admittedly there is yet to be produced a really economical portable reader, but the possibilities of local publishing by libraries and bookstores of both text and illustrated material in minutes on a cheap medium from a library stored locally offers economies far beyond the conventional technical complications of paper printing. Automatic royalties could be handled electronically and since only those numbers of books printed would be by actual request from customers, there would be minimum waste of actual material. If the publication was made by downloading from a central source there would be even less waste and the customers and staff at a library would never have to worry about returning material as the negligible cost of blank CDs could permit the clients to retain the copies eliminating all the clerical expense of keeping track of loaned copies. Beyond that, video material could be included with text to enliven and expand the possibilities of publishing creating whole new categories of material.
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In the case of a "library" CD, have an expiring access key that would expire when the book would otherwise be due.
A more modern concept would be one takes their reader to the library or bookstore (or possibly virtual online versions of above), and obtain books.
There were a few E-book systems a few years ago, I wonder what came of them.
E-books never seem to have caught on, but notebook computers are getting smaller yet more capable all the time. Presently, they're about the size of a thick magazine or large-format paperback book, so books on CD may not be an entirely dead format- but I would now expect a bit more than simple text and pictures from an E-book.