Actually, with an eBook you pay for the words of that specific book to show up on your screen. (I notice you say "the words of the physical book," which implie

Actually, with an eBook you pay for the words of that specific book to show up on your screen. (I notice you say "the words of the physical book," which implies that you do think the dead trees are the good, not the words printed on them -- I think most people you tried to sell the blank word-conveyor (paper) to would not agree.) It's been easy to be intellectually lazy up to this point, saying a printed book is a good because it feels nice to hold in our hands. But maybe it's actually always been a good (the words, the story) combined with a service (the paper as a delivery method - and looking at the attention in publishing paid to paper quality, bindings, design, etc seems to bear that out). Now we're just seeing the service part be delivered in an overtly separate way.