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I like the term 'friction,' and think it's appropriate.
The multiplicity of readers and formats is something that's not going to go away soon: so for the moment at least we're going to have to accept those factors and work around them. We will also have to wait for the industry to reach critical mass before the price of hardware starts to drop. So the important factor now is bringing the readership up so the hardware can get cheaper.
One big issue is price, ebooks are worth less to people than paperbacks and should be priced accordingly.
Another is the multiplicity of formats, forcing people to either buy multiple devices or install multiple reader programs in order to access their entire library.
A third is DRM. In many ways this is the biggest, and most harmful issue facing the industry today. Not only does it place obstacles in the way of reading the ebooks, but it also raises the price, and the spectre of the thought that the company can rewrite the license or go out of business taking your purchases with it. We've seen it happen with Google's paid video service, and with Mobipocket. Turn off the DRM server and you lose the ability to access what you've paid for. Without DRM you can keep a local archive copy and access it when and how you want.
Removing DRM will also help reduce the impact of multiple formats. There are multi-format readers out there, such as uBook, but they can't read the DRM'd formats. There are also various converters that will let you convert files from one format to another (provided it's unencrypted). It's easy to provide unencrypted books in a plethora of formats, just ask Arnold Bailey at Webscriptions or the people at Fictionwise. But you can't do that with DRM.
Get rid of DRM and the rest should follow.
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