[stephengillie]

> Adult fiction - particularly romantic and erotic - has migrated strongly to the e-book, whereas cookery and religious books still do well in print, as do books with illustrations. All for fairly obvious reasons.

Like writing on a notepad, reading a physical book does a good job of communicating with body language what you're doing. And if you believe in judging books by their cover, the book cover provides further information about its subject. And you can leave physical books in public places to start conversations.

Additionally, large books like cookbooks and illustrated books often come in a large form factor that tablets struggle to match. That's not too surprising, given that humans have been making books for about half a century, but only making tablets for maybe a decade.

And it's mostly the books we don't want others to know we're reading (adult fiction) for which we use the e-reader, where others can't tell what we're reading.

[delecti]

Slight correction, but humans have been making books for over half a millennium. We've got way more experience making them than tablets.

I use my kindle for everything though, I like that it doesn't give strangers any starting point for a conversation, regardless of what I'm reading.