Sell Books by Pieces/Chapters

Another idea came across my mind when strolling with Huiling after Guggenheim Museum in New York. All the bookstores, no matter they are on-line or off-line, only sell books as a whole piece. Why not sell it chapter by chapter? The idea came from iTunes where you can buy songs individually instead of buying the entire album. If we can somehow image the entire book, we can break down the entire book into chapters and charge for each chapter. If readers only finish through chapter five, then they only pay up to chapter five instead of the whole book. For myself I rarely finish reading the entire book, but the book-buying so far is either not buy or buy all. If I grab a best seller, I probably shy away from $25 for the entire book but wouldn't mind paying $1 for reading chapter 1. If I don't like it fine my loss is floored. I believe the impulsive reading for those first few chapters are not captured anywhere in the market by the way books are being sold and it could add up to pretty substantial economic value. Having said that, it will require a change in people's reading habit. Some may like to start from the very last chapter to get a peek of the ending and some may like to jump around in the middle. Also tracking which chapter has been read could be a technological barrier as well. Well, who would expect ten years ago that songs could be purchased one-by-one from an album? In a sense that's tearing apart the traditional "concept album" experience and spoiling all the fun for the artist.