“I mean, once we’ve got everything scanned, and cheap reading devices are ubiquitous … nobody’s going to need bookstores, right?” “Is that the business model for this?” I say, nodding at the scanner. “Selling e-books?”
That's not necessarily true. Ebooks are convenient, but physical copies of books also have advantages unique to them. As Penumbra pointed out earlier, the kindle requires battery (and repeated recharging) to operate, even when there's nothing wrong with it. The vast majority of people that I've seen in multiple book groups whenever the ebook vs physical copy issue pops up read both. To quote Steven Fry: books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
