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But they could be. Imagine looking up the notes that previous students leave in e-textbooks. Or seeing Jon Stewart's comments in the margins of Sarah Palin's latest tome.

PRINT BOOKS: Write to a favorite author, hope for a response by mail. DIGITAL BOOKS: Visit a favorite author's Facebook page to send a message and a friend request; follow that author's Twitter feed.

PRINT BOOKS: Collect an author's autograph at a bookstore reading. DIGITAL BOOKS:Use Autography, which debuts next month. It's a software program that allows writers to autograph an e-book using an iPad.

PRINT BOOKS: Want to publish a book? You'll need a proposal, an agent, an editor, a publisher and a marketing department DIGITAL BOOKS: Want to publish a book? There's an app for that, and authors can be quite successful. Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath and Karen McQuestion all are authors as famous for their aggressive self-promotion as for their books. However, self-publishing isn't always a good thing.

PRINT BOOKS: Donate used books to charity, sell them to a secondhand bookstore. DIGITAL BOOKS: "Used books" don't exist.

PRINT BOOKS:Swap books with friends. DIGITAL BOOKS: Until recently, the options were mostly limited to loaning your e-reader (and the books on it) to friends, or resorting to pirated files. Amazon's Lendle allows users to share certain (not all) Kindle titles for 14 days, similar to the way libraries arrange e-book loans.

PRINT BOOKS: Find an unfamiliar word in a book? Get a dictionary, look up the meaning. DIGITAL BOOKS:Use your e-reader to highlight the word and click on it, and the definition will display at the bottom of the page.

PRINT BOOKS:Collecting rare books, including first editions and antiquarian books. DIGITAL BOOKS:There's no equivalent so far.