“Amazon offers us the same “book” in paperback or Kindle edition, at slightly different prices, with the digital edition often costing as much as the print now that publishers can control their own ebook process.”
This is a large reason why I stopped purchasing books on my Kindle and went back to physical ones. Ebooks don’t need to be stored anywhere, they don’t need to be shipped, they don’t even need to be handled by anyone. It stands to reason that they should be cheaper than physical books, but they aren’t. Another reason I don’t purchase digital books is that I don’t actually own them. A lot of the content that people consume daily is stuff they can lose access to at any time. Personally I use Spotify, Steam, and Netflix daily. All of these are just digital libraries that I pay to have access to. We’re even seeing features in cars that can only be accessed if you pay a subscription. I think that with the revival of things such as records and physical books, people are realizing that having a tactile object is important. That’s why I think that physical books will continue to grow in sales and popularity in the future.