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I think some people have a knee jerk reaction against ebooks because they think they are just about reading on a screen. When I tell people that I sell ebooks, sometimes they say "OH, I wouldn't want to read a novel on a computer." Hey, I understand that, but then I explain that most people read ebooks on smaller devices, except for some people trapped at boring jobs in cubicles. (I receive the occasional grateful email from such cubicle inmates.)
More seriously, people can generally develop psychological attachments to concrete objects. Enjoying a book for a long time meant holding a book. So, for many people, breaking that connection seems too much like shattering the experience.
The same people have happily converted CDs and records to digital forms because that media was inserted in players, so holding the media was not the majority of the experience.
The smell of books thing, I'll never get. To me books either have no distinctive smell or they have the odor of being in a box in a musty basement.
Most people will change in time. In the early 1990s I use to say things like "What do I need a computer for?" I certainly changed my opinion about that.
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