How long has it been since being a "book lover" meant that you adored the feeling of a volume in your hands, the sight of shelves full of books in your home? It seems only yesterday that no one asked the question "ebooks or print books?" When I entered the romance writing field in 2004, experts were still saying ebooks were not a viable product and would never catch on.

Well, last month Barnes & Noble executive Marc Parrish predicted that traditional book retailers have just two years to adapt to an ebook-centric industry. Yes, he believes that by 2013, not only will ebooks have surpassed print books in popularity, they will dominate, just like downloadable digital music has made CDs a dying product line.

His prediction rings true considering the facts of what has happened in publishing so far:

* From 2009 to 2010, ebook sales increased five-fold (to almost $1 billion).

* From 2009 to 2010, ebook sales revenue increased ten-fold, to 10% of total book sales.

* 13 million ebook reading devices were sold in 2010, half of them in the last three months.

* In February 2011, according to industry reports, ebook sales led all other formats for the first time--including paperback and hardcover.

As much as I love ebooks, even I was shocked at that last item. How can it be that in five years' time, this medium went from disparaged to dominant? I don't think anyone saw this coming, even when Amazon first launched the Kindle. But I believe it: my own book sales demonstrate the same trends. I see my paperback sales shrinking and my ebook sales exploding.

Don't fear the ereader

There are still plenty of people out there who love physical books and see ebooks as a threat, like a virus that will eat away at libraries and bookstores and threaten the viability of their book-collecting hobby. To them I say, fear not! Print books will always be with us, even as there are still 33 rpm records around if you want to own them. (I dare say, because no technology other than your eyes is required to read print books, they will fare far better than records, 8 track tapes, CDs and videotapes have.)

But if you are an author or a publisher, you only hurt yourself if you refuse to acknowledge this publishing sea change. I refer to the words of Forrester blogger James McQuivey, who said this last November: "Not only do publishers need to take digital seriously, they must make it the new default for publishing, preparing for a day in which physical book publishing is an adjunct activity that supports the digital publishing business. And this dramatic reversal will have happened faster in book publishing than in any other media business."

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions about ebooks (although as I've written before, not unless he or she has actually tried out a decent ebook reader for awhile). My point is, if you are in the business of writing, publishing, selling or promoting books, you can only succeed by embracing ebooks.

A love for one, a need for the other

I can illustrate all this from my own life. I just published my new novel, Aggie's Nine Heroes. In the process, I had to design/create four different formats for the book: print, pdf, mobi (for Kindle) and epub (for nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, et al.). Sound like a pain? Yeah, it always is. And here's honestly how I feel about the process:

Creating the bookblock file for the paperback is always something of a pleasure. Because it will be a physical book, and look exactly as I designed it to every reader, I enjoy the craft of doing it. Likewise, working with the cover artist on the cover is tons of fun. And I admit, there is still no thrill like getting the proof copy and seeing a real book I wrote and designed in my hands.

Meanwhile, creating the ebook files is a pain in the arse. But I do it because I know it's the ebooks that will bring me more readers (yay!) and more income (not bad either!).

Getting the paperback book from my computer to reality to out in the hands of readers takes a couple weeks at best. By contrast, getting the mobi file from my computer to be live and purchasable in Amazon's Kindle store took--and I kid you not--about four hours. Factor in that a buyer can get a copy in a couple minutes, versus the days it will take to ship the paperback, and you understand another reason why ebooks are a good idea.

So I get it. Books made from trees will always be kinda awesome. It would be hard for me to publish a book I really love and not own it in paperback. But if not for ebooks, it's fair to say I could not reach even a small portion of the readers I want to entertain.

And that's what matters most, I think we can all agree.

Diana Laurence is a successful author with over a dozen published titles both in ebook and paperback formats. She also operates Living Beyond Reality Press, which she founded in 1998 for the purpose of publishing her own books. She (as Diane Lau) is the author of Do-It-YourSelf-Publishing.