This paper is a literature study which aims to analyse the book as a medium and its communication, but also what happens with the book when electronic and digital texts saturate society. The analysis and synthesis this literature exposition involve ends in a mapping of the book as a medium, the act of reading it and its future. The new texts and the changed way to read och write them convey a discussion of the books future as a paper product in the literature about books today. To read is a interdisciplinary process which involves many different elements, above all an active reader. It is the reader who gives life to the text och makes it complete. Before there was writing it was through speech humans communicated. When writing evolved society, culture och individuals changed. Memory was freed and knowledge could accelerate. From writing the book later evolved and with print came the book as we know it today. But a few, for example Plato, consider writing with scepticism. Because it was freed from the creator he couldn’t defend or explain the text in the same way as in a converation face-to-face. The text says the same thing no matter how many times you ask it. This scepticism towards the new and strange happens again and again when new media evolve and are introduced into society. Today the realative new electronic and digital texts raises questions and apprehensions rise. Electronic texts, mainly hypertext literature, and the reading of those differ from the printed ones, since they are more interactive, multilinear and they do not have an physical ending and can also include visual and audio information. Hypertext literature supply narratives and are therefore a potential competitor to the book. The capacity the electronic texts have the opportunity to make use of makes them less a threat to the traditional books future as I see it. They are two different mediums and they bring us as readers different kinds of narratives and experiences. They satisfy different needs humans have. The printed book brings the authors vision, whereas the electronic hypertext gives us the opportunity to interact and to some point control the story and works more like a puzzle for the user. But at the same time it can be more author controlled then the printed book.