My library has downloadable Kindle books, but I'm really not impressed with the service. The waits are longer than for the paper books, and there is still as lousy a selection of ebooks as there ever was. I think that people have imagining "OO! I can download any book from B&N that is available on Kindle, WHENEVER I WANT!" and it just hasn't worked out like that. Unless I seriously missed something.
Our waits are often longer than dead-tree versions, but it's due to the way that Overdrive, who manages the Fort Worth Library's ebook collection, works: you cannot turn a book in early. Sometimes you get the option to pick whether you can check it out for 7, 14, or 21 days, but usually they're all 14 days. So if there's 4 people in the queue, you know it's going to be 8 weeks or so (depending on when the person who's got it has checked it out) unless the library licenses more copies.
So I mostly go for older ebooks that aren't under such high demand, ones that I'd been idly considering buying but hadn't done so yet.
It's still pretty annoying that I can't actually find books that I happen to be looking for. Amazon's got a sweet little strategy there to keep people buying the books.
Overdrive's got a sweet little strategy too -- Mom reported back to me after she attended a meeting at her local library (she's on the Friends of the Library board) that not only does Overdrive charge some ridiculous amount at the outset to get your library set up with electronic lending, they also charge each time a book is checked out. Mom didn't remember the price, but remembered it was ridiculous considering that it's an electronic copy that doesn't wear out and can be loaned infinite times.
You can rotate the book you're reading on the Kindle, so that wouldn't be wrong. :D (You can rotate PDFs too, but as PDFs are handled badly by the Kindle they don't resize and you can't scroll down the page, so it's pointless.)
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So I mostly go for older ebooks that aren't under such high demand, ones that I'd been idly considering buying but hadn't done so yet.
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