E-books will grow a lot, but I don't see paper books becoming the vinyls/cds of reading. I think paper books will still have clear benefits in 5-10 or even 20 years.
* You can take notes and make drawings in the margins.
* The notes will be saved in a format that reads that will be readable for a very longs time.
* A book lasts a lot of years. Put it in a shelf, it might very well be readable in 150 years.
* It's soothing, it's linear, it doesn't have a thousand purposes. The interwebs isn't a click away.
* You can leave them at a friends place or at the subway after reading. E-book readers today does not promote sharing and I can only suspect future readers will be even worse. Although we can hack them and make copies, most people wont bother. DRM is here to stay.
* It doesn't need batteries. I know e-paper uses little power and things will evolve. But e-books still require energy.
* You can drop them to the floor without breaking them.
* You can take notes and make drawings in the margins.
* The notes will be saved in a format that reads that will be readable for a very longs time.
* A book lasts a lot of years. Put it in a shelf, it might very well be readable in 150 years.
* It's soothing, it's linear, it doesn't have a thousand purposes. The interwebs isn't a click away.
* You can leave them at a friends place or at the subway after reading. E-book readers today does not promote sharing and I can only suspect future readers will be even worse. Although we can hack them and make copies, most people wont bother. DRM is here to stay.
* It doesn't need batteries. I know e-paper uses little power and things will evolve. But e-books still require energy.
* You can drop them to the floor without breaking them.