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Buying a license to an ebook - no DRM, freedom to back up and convert to formats as I wish, ideally with an option to pass it on to someone else - would not seem ephemeral to me. It's my job to make sure I keep it available, like it's my job to make sure my paper books are not accidentally dropped in the bathtub, or gnawed by budgies, or covered in fatty fingerprints.
Having a book permanently available on those terms is worth to me about as much as a paperback book.
A copy with short temporary access, to read the book once, is totally and obviously ephemeral, and not worth terriblmuch. I can borrow paper-books for free from friends & family, and for hardly-anything-per-loan from the local library.
Ebook files with DRM are somewhere in between. They will be available to me for a couple of years, but depending how fast ebook readers break, I don't think I'll be able to re-read them 20 years down the line, which I do with some books on paper. (On top of the jumping through hoops stuff).
Definitely not worth as much as a paper book.
I used to see no difference between downloading a book to read it once, and borrowing it from the library. I'm moving away from that after an author explained how having books checked out from a library benefits the author.
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