"Do you remember the days when people got up to manually turn the channels on their TVs? Nobody does that any more, and nobody would want to go back." (Image by Michael Femia.)

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal interviewed author Stephen King on the future of e-books and physical books. A few excerpts:

“The Wall Street Journal: Do we get the same reading experience with e-books?

Stephen King: I don’t know. I think it changes the reading experience, that it’s a little more ephemeral. And it’s tougher if you misplace a character. But I downloaded one 700-page book onto my Kindle that I was using for research. It didn’t have an index, but I was able to search by key words. And that’s something no physical book can do.

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The Wall Street Journal: What about people who love physical books?

Stephen King: I’m one of them. I have thousands of books in my house. In a weird way, it’s embarrassing. I recently downloaded Ken Follett’s “Fall of Giants,” but I also bought a copy to put on the shelf. I want books as objects. It’s crazy, but there are people who collect stamps, too.

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The Wall Street Journal: How much time do you spend reading digitally?

Stephen King: It’s approaching half of what I read. I recently bought a print edition of Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers and the type was too small. A paper book is an object with a nice cover. You can swat flies with it, you can put it on the shelf. Do you remember the days when people got up to manually turn the channels on their TVs? Nobody does that any more, and nobody would want to go back. This is just something that is going to happen.