It seems the competition is finally heating up for OverDrive (thank goodness). Honestly, healthy competition in the marketplace can be a very good thing. Since there has been essentially no competition in ebook lending, OverDrive has felt no pressure to improve their interface or lower their access fees.
However, an unlikely company has jumped whole-hog into the fray - 3M. Yes, good ol' Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing has launched an ebook lending service. I say, "Bravo!"
The product/service was unveiled at the American Library Association annual meeting just a few days ago. It appears to be mostly ready for use with a fairly good variety of publishers and titles. Notably, it does not currently work with Amazon's Kindle as of yet, but does work with popular devices such as Apple's iPad. If, like Recorded Books', they are negotiating with Amazon, however, this could prove to be a great alternative to or addition to an OverDrive account.
Now that I've thought about it, I am going to always use a lower case "e" even if it is at the start of a sentence when writing "ebook". Then I can say I was influenced by Steve Jobs and the ubiquitous "i" used to start the names of all their popular electronic items.
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