Books. Everywhere.

I've spent a big part of the last few days researching electronic books. It's an ugly scene - a veritable tower, as one wag helpfully pointed out, of eBabel - a hodge-podge of incompatible file formats and DRM solutions. It is also extremely promising.

All this is prompted, of course, by the impending arrival of Apple's new iPad and it's accompanying book store. The iPad, of course, does lots of things - some reviewers call it Apple's take on the netbook market - but my own interest is in its potential as a book reader.

While I expect the iPad to be a hugely successful product, Apple's entry into the book selling field is a mixed blessing, IMO. On the down side, at least judging by what seems known so far, it will have the effect of raising, not lowering ebook prices - not much, perhaps, but every little bit counts. On the up side, rumor has it Apple's new bookstore will have a section for self-published documents, and thus do for the book world what podcasting did for, well, whatever. Time will tell.

Self-publishing is already a trend on the network, and there are a number of sites that offer collections of self-published work. Too, Google and Guttenberg, among others, offer enormous collections of "classic" books - books, that is, which have passed into the public domain or, in other words, were published before geezers like me where born - free. So all that stuff you didn't get around to reading in school is now there for the taking (as well as stuff you did get around to but might want to read again).

Electronic book readers - most of them, including Kindle, nook, and Sony's readers (these are the three that set the standards) - employ an "electronic ink" technology to produce a reading surface much like paper (unlike a backlit screen, easy to read in bright light). Several - the larger Kindle, for example - are about the same size and sell for the same price as the lowest-priced iPad. Many - the smaller Kindle, the nook, at least two of the Sony devices - sell for about half that price and approximate a mass-market paperback in size. Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and other big online book sellers - and many public libraries - have ebooks available, but here's where the DRM kicks in and things can get muddy.

Still, there's a variety of software available for both computers and mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry) that allow reading of all these books on backlit screens (like, of course, the iPad's) as well as on the stand-alone devices.

And more. Wireless on some readers, Wi-Fi on some, some play audio files or even check email. There's a lot going on.

But whatever it is, it's big - surprisingly big, to me - and sure to grow. The convenience, not to mention incredible coolness, of being able to carry a few dozen books around in your pocket just in case you get stuck in line at the bank and have a few minutes to read is just way, way too much to pass up.