In recent years the world of publishing and reading has found itself facing a real assault on digital books. E-books have been selling more than paper books on Amazon since 2011 (Polanka, 7). While digital book sales have skyrocketed, print book sales, especially paperback sales, have declined. Even the fact that e-books are not much cheaper than paper books does not seem to interfere with the popularity of the former. It would seem that the era of printed books is coming to an end, and very soon. However, despite the current prominence of e-books, it can be argued that they are unlikely to replace printed books any time soon or possibly at all. Both formats have their advantages and disadvantages, which makes it difficult to replace one with the other. Furthermore, they meet different needs and purposes. E-books are famous for their portability. Hundreds of e-books can be stored on a single device. Therefore, e-books do not take up space on the shelves and are convenient to take on the go, while even some paper books are bulky and quite heavy to carry around. Many e-books are open access, while paper books are not regularly available for free. E-books can be purchased and consulted immediately online, a feature that I particularly like and appreciate the most: many times I have been able to purchase and read an e-book at home within minutes of learning of its existence. It goes without saying that e-books are significantly easier to cite and cite than printed books, since the copy-paste function saves us the trouble of rewriting the cited text. Another important advantage of digital books is their specialized software, which makes reading much easier: search and reference tools, changeable font size and day/night mode, dictionaries. Last but not least, e-books retain......half the paper......and discardable, but have the advantage of changing the font size and page brightness. With this exception, printed books will survive. To quote British actor and writer Stephen Fry, “Kindles will no more replace books than escalators replace stairs” (9). Works Cited: Fry, Stephen. The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography. New York: Overlook Press, 2012. Print. Polanka, Sue, ed. No Shelf Required 2: Using and Managing Electronic Books Chicago: American Library Association, 2012 Pratchett, Terry, and Stephen Baxter London: Haper Voyager, 2013. Print.