As Barzini said in the Godfather,

The real magic happens when you make the free option the default, with the pay what you can as an afterthought. People who value it will contribute because it aligns with that Bitcoin ethos of voluntary exchange. Is it worth building the space? Absolutely. Start small. Throw it on a simple Nostr zap or even a GitHub repo with zapwr links.

You're pretty much describing what I'm doing with the Open Source Culture section on Satoshee. Only since I'm doing it publicly and using an actual company, I only stay within the Public Domain / Creative Commons boundaries. And I feature both books and other digital media, but the main idea is similar - the downloads are free, but the person can set their own price if they choose to pay. In my setup, 50% of the payments go to the Open Source Culture Fund to further advance the movement and reimburse content creators who release their works without copyrights.

In addition, every "product" in that section also has a corresponding note on nostr - if that gets zapped, either 100% of the amount goes to the Fund, or if the author(s) of the original work is/are on nostr, the payment gets split with them.

Including an Amazon (or other) link where the books or other media are sold is something I haven't thought of yet - although I did it with my own book, for obvious reasons, but your post is making me consider widening that approach as well.

Now the real question is, is there a market for it? In my case, the idea hasn't really proved itself yet (excluding the Creator Contest which proved to be quite popular), but keep in mind that:

For rare copyrighted books which can no longer be obtained anywhere else, your idea might be worthwhile for sure. Or if you consistently build up a large database of quality works you might build an audience alongside that. But be wary of the law, and protect your identity if you choose to go down that route 🤠