The death of the printed book in favour of ebooks has long been predicted. For, at least, ten years I have read and heard that soon libraries will be book-free and we will do all of our reading on electronic devices. What a terrible thought! So it was with a sigh of relief I have read a number of articles recently that suggest reports of the death of books is premature.

In fact, the sale of paperbacks is up, and ebooks down, although both forms are selling well. Various figures around the world show that print book sales increased by 3-5 percent in 2014 while sales of ebook devices remained stagnant; and that approximately 80 percent of books sold are paperback or hard cover. In Australia last year, 55.4 million print books were sold. That’s almost 2.5 books for every man, woman and child.

This is not to say that ebooks will disappear. Even a book lover like me uses kindle on my iPad to store my travel library or to preview a book at a cheaper price to see if I want to buy the more expensive paperback.

Ebooks are particularly useful when travelling. Instead of paying excess luggage costs for all my books I can store as many as I want in one small device. And if I run out of reading material in the middle of the night when all the bookstores are closed, a new book is just a click away. How amazing is that?

My preference, however, is always to hold a book in my hand and it seems I’m not alone. Particularly heart-warming is the fact that children are reading more books and parents and schools are doing a wonderful job in promoting the joy of reading. The three best-selling books in Australia in 2014 were children’s books and they also took out 5 out of the top 10 titles.

Speaking to a teacher who recently bought my latest book The Entwhistle Experiment Book 1: Glued for her primary school class she told me how excited her students become when they receive a new, paperback book. I asked her why she thought this was so and she responded she had asked this question too. The student responses included:

• I love the smell of books
• It feels good when you rub your hand over the cover of a book
• I love the bright covers
• Books are much easier to read in bed
• I like to turn the pages and see how many there are to the end of the chapter
• They’re more fun
• They’re easy to carry
• I love to go into a book store and choose

What do you think? When you examine your own book buying habits, do you buy paperback books or are you an ebook convert, or both? And why do you choose one option over another?