E-books are everywhere these days. I’ve tried just about every platform and delivery variation that exists, and there are a lot of them. I like the concept of them; it’s the delivery and packaging of them that I despise so much.

Last year was arguably the breakthrough year for e-books in the conscience of the general public. Millions of e-book readers were sold (think Kindle, Nook, iPad) and there were widespread reports that e-book readers were one of the most popular Christmas gifts. The most popular e-book provider for libraries to provide e-books for their patrons — Overdrive — reports that it is overwhelmed by demand as a result.

Overdrive, to me, is the poster child for what’s still very wrong about the packaging and delivery of e-books. In terms of criticism, where do I start? The incomprehensible user interface? The complicated process of figuring out what your local library has actually subscribed to? The horrible experience (which has only recently been improved a bit) of trying to check out and download an e-book on a mobile device like the iPhone 4 that I use? And here’s another criticism that is exacerbated by the huge increase in demand that I previously mentioned: the inability to limit one’s search/browse to just those e-books that are available for checkout. Last night as I lay in bed I used my iPad to try to find a new e-book to read on Overdrive. I limited my browsing to e-books available in ePub format. There were about 125 pages (each with about 20 results) of books to choose from. I spent half an hour painstakingly paging through the results to find an e-book — ANY e-book — that was avaiable to check out. I wasn’t even bothering to search/browse by subject or known author or anything sensible like that. I just wanted to first see what e-books were actually available and then see if any of those looked interesting to read. But could I do that? NO, of course not.

And then there is the issue of Adobe’s idiotic DRM that goes with checking out ePub format e-books on Overdrive. Users are required to create an Adobe ID before they can actually read an e-book they have checked out. I have a problem with that, first of all, because I resent having to created a superfluous account with Adobe and risk having to be on their registered list for marketing of other Adobe products that I couldn’t care less about. But it gets worse. I had an e-book that I was reading on my iPhone 4 and I had verified my Adobe ID. Unfortunately I had a problem with my iPhone 4 that required me to restore it to factory settings, wiping out everything on the device and starting over from scratch. I restored everything on my iPhone include the Overdrive app. The e-book I was reading was still checked out to me so I downloaded it again. However, in the meantime I had forgotten my Adobe ID password and had to reset it. When I tried to access the e-book and was asked to verify my Adobe ID, I was told that basically I couldn’t read the e-book because it was already assigned to a different user. Argh. Adobe’s DRM is apparently very stupid.

I don’t have a Kindle although I’ve used one a little bit. I don’t have a Nook but I’ve seen and held one for a little bit. As previously mentioned, I do have an iPhone 4 and an iPad. I think both devices easily and clearly trump Kindle and Nook in terms of e-book reader capability. I particularly despise Amazon’s proprietary Kindle e-book format; kudos to Barnes & Noble, Apple, and others for pushing the ePub format instead. I have to say that of all of the e-book reader software I’ve used, though, Amazon’s Kindle software is probably the best.

Lots of other important issues revolve around e-books, including what their popularity means for public libraries, which are still heavily tied to the print — or, as I like to call it, the “offline” — world. There is a big impact on booksellers too, especially independent booksellers. I was interested to read an online article about this very issue in today’s Daily Herald, which mentioned my all time favorite independent bookstore in St. Charles, IL: Town House Books. (Interestingly, the owner of this bookstore sees no noticeable impact.) Other complicated issues about e-books include copyright, DRM, etc. Overall I am happy about the rising popularity of e-books and I plan to continue to read them. But e-book providers — Overdrive in particular — have a long way to go to make the user experience palatable.