I can’t see me reading a book on a phone, but I can see that in countries where they have a high proportion of commuters, this would be attractive (and that, therefore, ebook readers are less attractive).

POD stills seems to have a stigma here — I’m not sure if this is a personal thing. I can’t see any reason why the quality of POD books should be much, if any, less than books created via the usual methods. It may be due more to less attention to detail by those actually creating the POD books, rather than limitations of the process?

You’re right: Communities, connecting readers with books, is the key. Pretty much every book I read these days is recommended to me by a friend/colleague.