From the article: "Book lovers will always love books. There's something irreplaceable about a book. It gives you a physical, even an aesthetic, experience. For me, it's an emotional thing. My books are my friends. There's something about having a book in bed, about holding it, even smelling it, that I could never get from an e-reader. Isn't the first thing you do when you move house, to rearrange your books?"

... yet, hasn't all of this been said about vinyl? Or CDs? Even console games are heading towards the online store/ download route. I'm sure DVDs will go the same way.

I'm in a strange position - perhaps, as the article concludes, I talk digital and buy analogue. You see, I love physical books and have no intention of getting a reader. Yet, as a writer, I long for the day when a greater variety of fiction becomes readily available to download. I think it will increase my potential income.

I'm probably of two minds as well. I mainly buy paper books and I prefer them for many situations (though not all). I suppose I just get exasperated with the reasons people give for why others won't buy e-books in quantity. It's always a hazy, nostalgic fondness for paper that's so personal and intangible yet specific - and then it's presumed to extend to harried, plane-hopping, thriller-reading businessmen; squeeing, txt-spking fan-girls and people who live forty miles from a book store, etc.

It's an understandable reaction to the sheer weight of hype surrounding e-books. Some of it has merit, some has not. Personally, I'd love to know how e-books would perform without the price advantage encouraged by Amazon et al.

Don't e-books deserve a price advantage, though? They not only remove so much cost from the supply chain, they also remove so much risk too. Just putting an e-book 'out there' can be done for a pittance compared with even a small litho print run - and with no chance of costly returns.

Or, if you think price is more about value provided than cost incurred, then e-books do have curtailed rights compared with paper books. Maybe a discount is appropriate - especially given that hardbacks cost more than paperbacks.

But how much cheaper are ebooks to produce?

You'll know much more about this than I do: I'm a freelance editor whose only foray into in-house publishing used a business model more akin to the newspapers. I'm aware that people tend to regard electronic products as somehow less 'valuable' than a real thing, even when we know it costs less than a quid to print a mass-market book and that the main costs lie with all the hard work before a book is published. We also know that Amazon isn't playing fair; it's using its clout to force e-book prices down because it happens to be a premier manufacturer of e-readers, which benefits its sales of Kindles and tightens its share of the book market.

Isn't there a danger that ebook sales will cannibalise sales of paper titles? Shouldn't we in the industry be at least slightly concerned that the future for booksellers is looking rather grim?

I agree, Rob. A price reduction for e-books is necessary - after all, the consumer will have to invest in a costly reader to avail of e-books. Mind you, while kindle e-book prices are generally cheaper, there hasn't been much of a price cut when it comes to downloading music - so who knows how this will roll when Apple get involved.

If there is no price cut, one would have to ask where the extra money is going to end up. As Rob says, the publisher will have less returns to write-off and less physical printing costs - so it would be unfair for them to pocket the extra readies. The author, of course, should see an increase in royalties for e-books and some publishers are already implementing this for kindle e-books. However, I fear that while expenses may be cut for the publisher in terms of printing costs etc., online retailers (such as Apple) may dig the claws in and demand a larger slice of the pie...

I'm not young (ie of the age group that doesn't like paying for anything), but recently I downloaded a free app. for my phone. Now I download free books (mostly out of copyright classics) and I can read them anywhere, such as when camping, when waiting in the car for my wife to finish shopping / sons to finish football. While sitting in the dark waiting for my youngest to fall asleep. I like real books, but I like ebooks too, because they have their place.

Perry, I think that's one of the most important points you make. It's unlikely that even the most avid e-books fan would throw all their paper books in a skip. It's not a binary choice. You can have 10% of your reading on e-books or maybe 40%. You can read e-books just while traveling but not when you're home. You can read e-books for new releases because you hate hardbacks, but like paperbacks. You can download e-books for titles that are only currently available in the US. Lots of possibilities and none of them mean turning your back 100% on paper. But likewise, none of the reasons for keeping paper will halt the spread in popularity of electronic alternatives.

You know, my girlfriend and I were watching TV last night and noticed an ad for Amazon kindle. I'm sure you've seen it - it's the one where two people are sitting by the beach, in deck chairs, each reading from their kindles. And it struck me why I currently shy away from e-readers: I spend a large part of my life reading from a screen. When I want to relax, reading from a screen would hardly cut it. And it's not just us hacks who suffer from that predicament - whether you work in an office, a call centre or surf the web a lot, play loads of video games, even watch a lot of TV or DVDs... the amount of time you spend in front of a screen is going to be tremendous. For me, to read is to get a break from that.