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There are types of books that don't transition well to digital: art books, coffee-table books, novelty books of various sorts (pocket books of quotes, 1" square tiny-text classics), many kinds of children's books (pop-ups, books with texture or cutouts), certain kinds of manuals and reference books. Workbooks. Memento books for tourists. Special-event books: convention schedule books with space available to have them signed by various authors. And so on. If everything else collapses, there'll still be demand for these kinds of books--the way that the saddle-and-riding-crop industry hasn't vanished; it's just gotten a lot smaller.
Some other books are currently best in print because ebook formatting hasn't caught up to their needs: many textbooks, poetry, hymnals and other songbooks, thesaurus & several other types of reference books, magazines--anything that needs either precision formatting or flipping back and forth a lot. I assume that eventually, these will work well on portable devices, but it'll take quite a while, and more large-screen devices that work as efficiently for ebooks as the current e-ink devices. For now, however, they're much better in print.
But for leisure reading... paper was used because it was the cheapest medium available. And it no longer is.
I am so glad my leisure-reading budget can now be squeezed as low as it needs to, and I can limit paper book-buying to those nonfiction items I either want as permanent reference works or to enjoy the art.
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