Too many words to read here so forgive me if I am repeating someone else... There are two things you get with a book 1. The words/ideas of the author(s) 2. The physical medium on which it is produced Some print books are beautiful, and deliberately made so. The experience is with the whole package (Physical interaction between reader, pages, and pictures/words) and you could not replace that experience. Children's books (e.g. the hungry caterpillar) would be a good example of this. Equally you are unlikely to want to travel with such a book, and the experience would be suited to sharing, via a Library perhaps, and the book worth having space for on your bookshelf. These are things of beauty and should be more expensive that electronic words and pictures. Some books are just words - and the beauty is in them (I recently enjoyed a free version of H.G Wells' War of the worlds on my Smartphone - superbly written). For these an eBook is perfect - no need for pictures, easy to carry around etc.. I do want to share this experience with friends though and do not know of an easy way to do this. So for me the eBook vs physical book debate is more about the user interface requirements of the media within it, and less about whether print and paper is better than electronic formats. Great article - thanks for keeping us thinking.