I don't get the whole stopping at lvl30. Seems so arbitrary, if you're going to have a system it shouldn't just randomly end. lvl0 spells are frankly naff anyway, just give them as baseline when you hit the lvl, you've earnt it for doing the lvling. Having the spell is a taster, and will push people to farming/buying the books to level the spell up.
I think getting rid of the afk grinding to lvl them entirely is the best call, it's just a boring system that shouldn't be in any game.
Skill points from books makes sense. Maybe also from grinding mobs or killing bosses? Small amount of SP rewarded on kill to a random skill. So you can focus lvl a skill with books, or RNG it by grinding and lvling them all slowly.
I have always liked the fact when you hit levels you get that skill, we curbed it off at 30 on our old server and I dont really know why.
I guess its part of the hype that you get your spell you've been after for awhile and you get that **** yeah! rather than "oh everyone has it" kind of feeling.
I mean you could work a system where
You auto learn all 'basic' skills with no level cap.
You can only level skills with skill books (they have an RNG chance of working) but all books are more common to obtain (as obviously you dont want a FlameField book to be 1/50000 of dropping for it to only level your skill 1/10 chance).
You can't make the level 0 skill trash, or low ball the numbers, as it would just really hammer the server in a negative way, as everyone would moan the skills are crap / low damage / not balanced etc. - but I dont think it'd be necessary, anyway.
I mean, there are tons of ideas been thrown my way and its making sure all the systems we add come together, rather than being disjointed and making it feel like its just been thrown in there because we can, not because we should.