To extend your analogy, it would be like a bookstore selling (or renting out) a “debinder” machine that can strip a hard cover off a book and turn it into a paperback (and vice versa). Or, perhaps, a book compressor that can compress a book in exactly the right way so that it becomes a smaller, more portable version of it.

(More generally, there are already lots of products that “covert” a book to a similar but more useful item: bookmarks, stands that hold it open, etc.)

Publishers may not like that product, and may even embargo dealers that sell them, but it’s not clear that they would have any kind of legal right to stop them, even if they were only used for this one purpose.