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When someone asks you if you read a book, they aren't asking you if you gazed at sheets of paper. If someone holds up a paper book and says "Did you read this book?" They probably don't mean to ask if you read this particular paper book, or even that you read it in paper format. What they mean is whether you read the content. Answering "no", because you read an e-book version would lead to confusion. Denying that Don Quixote is a book leads to absurdities.
The word book can and does often refer both to the media and the content. Before e-books, the distinction didn't matter much. Imagine an author sells 1,000 copies of their story in paper format and 1,000 copies in e-book format. If you asked that author how many books they sold, would they say 1,000 or 2,000? If they said 1,000, because only paper books are books, that would lead to confusion. Paper books are one definition of book, but they are only one definition. Most of the time, the format is simply irrelevant.
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