I think paper book sales are doomed for long-term decline.
I'm not sure that's true. I own a Kindle but I find it's less expensive to purchase new paper books just about every time. Sure there's the occasional time when a book is on offer in the Kindle store, but it's pretty rare. I haven't re-charged my Kindle for more than a couple of years.
Also there's a bunch of authors I've followed and read over the last 40 years whose books I always buy in hardback whenever they publish something new.
When it comes to technical books paper wins every time, simply because it's far easier to jump about the pages. Also diagrams, graphs, code samples, that kinda thing are pretty awful in current e-book implementations.
And then for many of us there's nothing quite like the feel of a paper book and, if you have space, building a physical library of stuff read, and stuff to be read and being able to peruse it when looking for the next thing to read. Though this does make for a lot of boxes each time you move house.
A lot of people dismiss this, but I think it’s absolutely true. A hugely formative part of my childhood was just browsing the bookshelves at home and pulling down whatever looked interesting. If our books were on kindle, that experience doesn’t happen.
Also, in the immortal words of John Waters: “If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
This is precisely how I widened the scope of what I read as a youngster. I get very excited when I visit a new friend's or acquaintance's house and see they've got a bunch of heavily populated bookshelves, and there are books lying around everywhere.
Another thing I forgot to add as a reason for the continued existence of paper books is flicking through older read books and discovering a bus or train ticket, or a receipt, used as a makeshift bookmark which can evoke strong memories or feelings from the time and place you'd read that particular book. And getting your favourite authors to sign first editions at book readings.
On what grounds, may I ask? There currently doesn't seem to be a long-term declining trend in paper book sales, so are you expecting a significant change in technology or society that will cause a long-term decline? Or (possibly) did you conclude this (quite reasonably) when there was such a trend and haven't checked recently?
I disagree. Here are some reasons for prefering paper books that are not habit or nostalgia:
Longevity.
Reliability.
Isolation and permanence of content - nobody is going to come into my house and edit my physical books. Some eReader eco-systems are robust in this regard; others remain under the control of a thrid party.
Ease of mark-up, and the range of mark-up available is an order of magnitude superior to those of eBooks.
Phenomenally intuitive bookmarking interface. So easy to bookmark different places and so fast and easy to use those bookmarks.
High-quality images and colours.
Screen size; I have many books that present a large, very high resolution view. For books that benefit from it - art books in particular - this is a real advantage. The best eBook reader can't compare, and small kindles and the like are just terrible in comparison for this. Large eBook reader systems such as a desktop PC with a huge, high resolution monitor is better, but this is something of a high-cost option.
Multi-screen - I can open a lot of physical books at once, and they simply expand into available space (really fast, too - the loading time is so short that I barely notice). Having five or six ebooks open at once and flitting between them quickly is either impossible or much less satisfactory than the physical book version. I habitually have three or more physical books open at once, and five or six is not uncommon. I suppose you could call this one "habit", in that I am in the habit of being able to look at five or six books at once, easily flitting between them at speed.
Realtive self-contained operation; they rely only on a light-source being available to operate for decades or even longer. eBooks require much more support in terms of software, power and hardware.
Random-access interface; the speed with which I can change pages (not just consecutive pages, but large numbers of pages at once) using a physical book is an order of magnitude better than an eBook, and I will often find part of a book I seek using this random access method. Even when I am familiar with an eBook's layout, quickly finding a particular section is just much more clumsy. The reading experience is damaged by this inferior aspect of the interface.