Free would be lovely but they could also do a paper copy for, I don't know, $5ish and sell it with the SDCC merch.
This is a good idea. A $5-10 cost would be reasonable while deterring people who have no use for it.
I liked to read through it while passing time in line, between panels, or during panels when I felt like I wanted a diversion that didn’t involve twiddling on my phone. It was also nice to read after the con at the hotel on Monday and at home the following weekend to mitigate PCD. For me it was one of the three physical pillars of the SDCC experience (the other two being the badge and the WB bag) — all of those from previous years I keep in a special
place, and the year I didn’t go (2015) I still went out of my way to acquire the souvenir book and bag, and I read the book to make me feel like I was still a part of it. Making the book PDF-only guarantees that I’ll never read any part of it.
I printed and bound the 2020 PDF and read it that weekend while navigating the virtual panels. It obviously was not as slick as the books during regular years but at the end it got an equal place with all my other books. Making it was fun, but it took a lot of time and resources. I don’t see myself doing this every year.