I was one of the early adopters of ebook readers, back when Sony was the only one making them, and they retailed in the $400 range. I remember making quite a few posts on wotmania predicting that reader gadgets were the way of the future and that ebooks would soon dominate the physical medium. I also remember being soundly mocked and berated (yes, both; it was a troublesome time ) for my opinions, and told that ebooks would never be more than a niche.

Of course, no one but myself remembers those old posts, so my attempts at "I told you so"s fall a little flat, but still. . .feels good, man.

Honestly, though, pettiness aside, we'll all be better off once ebooks come to fully dominate the marketplace. There are VERY few advantages to the physical book medium, and most of the people who prefer them do so for sensory reasons (feel, smell, sound, etc). I maintain, though, that there's nothing inherently pleasant about the feel of a stack of paper, or the smell of binding glue. We've just come to associate such things with the pleasure of reading, is all, and so to us, they are enjoyable. It'll be interesting to see how the first generation to grow up with primarily electronic books feels about the physical medium.