If you want the joy of owning a physical book, which looks nice, advertises its presence to you every time you walk past and shows off how educated you are, then a physical book is actually the optimum solution to the problem. Like vinyl records, they offer a different experience of media consumption that some people consider superior, as well as showing off that you're a connoisseur and filling your shelves with nice artwork. So paper books will always have a niche, even if it's a fairly small one when it comes to novels.

What you're proposing though is like inventing a particularly-complex-to-manufacture CD... after the iPod. If you want the convenience of something that not only has resizeable, searchable text but also weighs very little, then any current generation reader offers the exact experience you're looking to replicate, except you only have to buy and carry around one of them.

Even if and when we get to the point where e-ink screens can be manufactured for a dollar, I don't see much of a market for one-book readers.