Good grief. G-mail tells me: "Due to a filter you created, this message was not sent to Spam. Edit Filters"
To answer the headline, no of course not. Physical books will not "be gone" in 5 years, but there may be fewer of them distributed than e-books. At Amazon.com, e-books are already outselling hardback books. They will not disappear in developed countries because the size, resolution and contrast of e-book readers is still inferior to paper books, and probably still will be in 5 years. Also because people are conservative and tend to stick with an obsolete technology if they can afford to. That is why wealthy people were still using horses and carriages well into the 20th century, when they might have used automobiles. That is why some older scientists still look down on Internet publication, and insist that real scientific papers must be published on paper. In the long term, 20 or 30 years, paper books will almost disappear, except for specialty markets such as children's books. - Jed
