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A book is a book is a book whether it is written on stone, parchment, a papyrus scroll, a screen or tattooed on your skin.
What an e-book is not is a codex. That's the proper word for what people commonly think of when they say "book". The distinguishing feature between a paper book and an e-book is not that one is a book and the other is not, but that one is a codex and the other is not. If you read a paper version of a book while I read the same book in an e-book format, we both read the same book.
The article claims that children learn less from e-books, but that's not accurate. There was a study that people had more difficulty remembering the order of events in the plot, but the methodology was suspect, and other areas showed no difference.
Why should anyone think that book publishers would be any better at running a bookstore the people who run Barnes and Noble or the people who ran Borders?
Amazon isn't the only player in e-books. Kobo and B&N are still around. Amazon just out-competes them. E-books are here to stay. The publishers cannot defeat e-books. There are too many good writers who bypass the publishers, even if the publishers decided not to sell e-books at all, it wouldn't end e-books.
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