What books essentially are is still an intriguing question, especially due to the rise of e-books, e-texts, and e-readers. Electronic reading devices—like the Kindle and the iPad, computer monitors and screens, and the displays of handheld tablets and mobile phones—have redefined not only what reading is but also what books are and can be, as texts are increasingly written, distributed, and read on electronic media. What are the intersections, interactions, and reciprocal influences between both the analogue and the digital, between conventional and electronic writing, printing/publishing, and reading? How are books changed by this development, and how can “bookishness” be seen as combining both traditional print and electronic books? To what extent is “bookishness” related to the materiality of written or printed books, to the form and format of books, to printed books as material things and tactile/sensual objects? On what does their cultural and social status depend if e-books become more and more common? Do e-books still represent the end of the book as printed matter and material object, or do printed books still possess some degree of resistance and inalienability? Are electronic media the end or the future of reading?

So far, these new electronic devices and reading practices have not fundamentally altered what could be considered to be a book. On the contrary, they also seem to support the old-fashioned attributes and values related to printed books and their specific distribution and reception. It still seems to be a question not of printed versus electronic books but rather of how books and e-books are produced, distributed, and used: incautiously and carelessly or meticulously and carefully, paying tribute to the centuries-old traditions of fine print and typographic standards. It might be the case that typography, as a more or less ideal combination of an easy and comfortable-to-read layout that arranges graphic signs in a certain size and format (including the interplay between margin and text or between black and white), is essential for any symbol-carrying device and any printing/publishing process. If so, then the most important reading instrument would be the page and likely also the double page as a display or synoptic carrier of typographic signs that constitute—in a series of pages—the written or printed book in the codex format. This is again related to the material form of the book and its cultural and social status.