eBooks not known and not liked

Library Journal's Academic Newswire released the following story earlier this month: "Ebooks Gain at Libraries, but Lack of Awareness Remains an Issue."  It focuses on eBooks in academic settings, but could be of interest to all libraries.  They discuss a survey by eBrary that found that 88% of libraries subscribed to eBooks of some sort.  But....here's our problem:

Only six percent of respondents said ebook usage was excellent, compared to 22 percent who said usage was poor.

Right.  I don't think it's just lack of awareness, which clearly has an impact too.  I think it's a lack of good interfaces, the behemoth of digital rights management which makes downloading books a total pain.  If you had to fiddle, download licenses, update programs, install some software--all just to get a book on your PDA...would you come back?  And yes, I know...the first time is worse because you're updating and installing stuff which you won't have to do in that quantity again.  But that doesn't matter.  If the first time is bad, the second time isn't coming.  People won't come back...and clearly, this survey shows that they don't.

What can we do?  We need to get good information out about our eBooks to our entire communities.  We need to lobby for an end to DRM.  We need to lobby for better interfaces and processes from the eBooks vendors.  We need to assess whether the use of these resources really warrants their presence.  Everything in libraries is about the most bang you can get for your buck.  eBooks aren't any different.