Jonathan Franzen certainly thinks so, citing the 'instant gratification' they provide:
Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing - that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.Although I'm happy to sit idly while the newspaper industry dies, I find myself slightly less comfortable with the idea of books simply fading away; luckily, though, I'm inclined to think they won't. A book is an object, and publishers are at least beginning to understand this, designing attractive hardcover copies that people will wish to treat as aesthetic items within their homes. For me, it's not the permanence of print that makes me long for it after hours of reading 'temporary' text on a screen that's liable to be updated and revised each coming hour, but more the closely-held opinion that ebooks remain an inferior medium through which to deliver longform texts.
The internet is ideal for news, and longform journalism, too, appears to have found a welcome home there. The business model is shaky, but that will come. But this does relatively little to quell my suspicion that at least some people will pine for printed matter once the crowd forgets the smell of a book for good. Of course, that said, an alarming number of people already have.
(N.B. An earlier post on ebooks and their effect on the publishing industry can be found here.)