Shopping cart and news website combined, is this a good idea?

I have have a legal content website with lots of information daily updated, they also sell books and courses. I'm talking many databases and almost 3k+ clients who pay only for the information they provide.

They don't have a shopping cart and they also want to use this oportunity for a redesign of the website from scratch.

They bought an opencart template for all the website, using the blog backend for uploading information and changing the home page and sections design. They want to have the two of them combined. So you could be reading a paper and also have one book on your shopping cart.

Is this a good idea? Wouldn't it be better to have a separate section for selling books and courses?

Most of the users are also professional (lawyers) 50+ of age and some students and universities.