I know there's many who view the covers of books as independent art (and I can feel for those who believe ebooks don't cater very well to that aspect), but I'm glad I was never really bitten by that particular bug.
From an artistic standpoint, my physical books were little but 3/4'' - 4" spines when shelved. Not much to look at, really. I always took care to make sure my books were well taken care of (no creased spines, no dog-eared or torn pages, etc...), but that was to appease my OCD rather than being born out of any deep "respect" for the objects themselves.
So ebooks liberated me from all that nonsense (nonsense in my opinion, of course). There was nothing to "take care of" or clean—I could even "throw away" the ones I knew I'd never want to re-read without any guilt!
I've always thought of ebooks as books freed of all unnecessary baggage.
