Hachette’s entire catalog of 5,000 ebooks will now be available through OverDrive, Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 platform, and the 3M Cloud Library, under a pricing and licensing model similar to the one employed by Random House. New titles will be made available to libraries immediately upon publication, and Hachette will charge libraries three times the retail hardcover price for new releases. One year after publication, the purchase price will drop to one and a half times the cost of retail, according Hachette’s announcement. These ebooks are then “owned” by the purchasing library. Licenses do not expire, and titles can be checked out an unlimited number of times under a one book/one user model.

“Our goal is to have authors’ work available on as many bookshelves and platforms as possible, and we’re looking forward to working with public libraries to serve their communities of readers as their reading habits evolve,” Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch said in the announcement.

The news first broke in a New York Times op-ed by NYPL President Tony Marx, who commented on improving relations between the Big Six publishers and libraries over the sale of ebooks.

“While HarperCollins…was the first to provide access, after the [economic] downturn, it limited the number of times each e-book could be lent, while Hachette decided to no longer sell new e-books to libraries, and Penguin, which had agreed to do so, said it might back out,” he wrote. “To their credit, the publishers have now each come around,” with Simon & Schuster and Macmillan also recently announcing pilot programs.

Yet while the situation is improving, “many issues still need to be sorted out,” Marx adds. Between the expiring licensing terms or loan caps or imposed by  HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, or the significantly higher-than-retail prices charged by Random House and Hachette, ebooks remain very expensive for libraries, during a period of rising demand and declining budgets.

Hachette’s announcement states that its library ebook pricing model will be reviewed annually, with input from stakeholders including the American Library Association (ALA). ALA President Maureen Sullivan today expressed hope that an ongoing dialog may lead to more favorable pricing for libraries in the future.

“We welcome Hachette Book Group’s assertion that they will continue to review their library pricing going forward,” Sullivan said in a statement to the press. “ALA and its members believe that there must be business models with lower price points for which publishers can still make a reasonable profit.”

“With open minds and open communications channels, I believe libraries, publishers and authors will continue to find solutions to bring more content and greater balance to the reading ecosystem.”

As part the library’s efforts to raise awareness about poetry leading up to National Poetry Month in April, NYPL is encouraging aspiring poets to “follow @NYPL on Twitter, and submit three poetic Tweets in English as public posts on your Twitter stream between March 1 and 10, 2013.” Each set of three poems will constitute a single entry. To qualify, all three must contain the @NYPL Twitter handle, and at least one of the tweets must reference libraries, books, reading, or New York City.

“Twitter seems like the perfect medium for this contest,” Johannes Neuer, NYPL Associate Director of Marketing, told LJ. “It has a wide reach and requires a lot of discipline and creativity because it’s restrictive [in terms of character count], which makes writing for it challenging.”

Neuer said that the contest was partly inspired by the Twitter Fiction Festival—a five-day, experimental virtual storytelling event organized last fall by Twitter, NYPL Labs, The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and the Plympton literary studio devoted to ‘”serialized fiction for digital reading.”

“It was inspiring to see how well this microblogging platform is suited for writers, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the poems that are published,” he said.

Ten winners will be selected by a panel of judges, based on originality, creativity, and artistic quality. Each winner will receive a set of poetry books including Red Doc> by Anne Carson, Quick Question: New Poems by John Ashbery, Place: New Poems by Jorie Graham, The Narrow Road to the Interior by Kimiko Hahn, and The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 by Lucille Clifton.

Their work will also receive significant exposure. Each day during National Poetry Month in April, NYPL will highlight one of the 30 winning poems in its social media channels, reaching more than one million of the library’s fans and followers. And, winners could potentially be selected for inclusion in an upcoming special edition NYPL poetry ebook.

Writers and poets interested in participating must first register, so that NYPL has their twitter handle and contact information available. Requiring participants to include the @NYPL handle in each submission will enable NYPL’s Meltwater Buzz social media monitoring software to capture entries and match them to this list of registrants. The panel of judges will then review all of the collected entries and select winners by March 18. Participants can submit one three-poem entry per day, and all poems must be original, unpublished, and must not have won any prior awards.

“We’re looking forward to reaching a lot of people with these poems, and inspiring them to engage with poetry—and maybe write poetry themselves—through retweets, commentary, likes, +1s, and blogs. And, of course, hopefully we’ll inspire some people to follow the New York Public Library year-round on our social media channels,” Neuer said.

Photo courtesy of the Queens Public Library.

The New York, Queens and Brooklyn Public Library systems have partnered with the city to ensure that students affected by Hurricane Sandy are able to stay on course academically.

Late last month, schools chancellor Dennis M. Walcott announced that the Department of Education would offer online courses to students displaced from their homes and to those attending affected schools. “The impact on students demands more resources to ensure they get the education they need,” Walcott said. “These online courses will help keep our students on track for their academic success.”

The courses—which are an extension of New York’s digital iZone initiative—can be completed through any computer with Internet connectivity. The city’s public library systems will complement the DOE’s efforts by offering these students Internet access across its branches.

“The city’s critically important program to help students displaced by the storm is a public service that we are very proud to offer as we continue to do all we can to help New York recover and support education, ” said New York Public Library president Tony Marx.

In the storm’s wake, librarians have come together to offer support and resources. At November’s annual NYCSLS fall conference, New York City librarians discussed a plan to deliver supplies and volunteers to affected libraries so that they could continue to provide essential student services. Linda E. Johnson, president and chief executive of Brooklyn Public Library, said that just days after the storm, bookmobiles traversed some of the borough’s hardest-hit neighborhoods and delivered books, charging stations and other materials to those in need. “We will continue to help all of our patrons, volunteers and employees recover from the disaster,” Johnson said. NYPL’s Tony Marx added that since Sandy struck, the library has offered free Internet, heat, power and other resources to thousands of New Yorkers.

To enroll in the city’s online courses, students must complete an interest form online or by calling 718-642-5885. The city will set up a learning plan for each eligible student, and they can go online to access the courses.

Along with Internet access, libraries will offer students technical assistance and other support, said Bridget Quinn-Carey, chief operating officer of the Queens Library. “Our doors are open, our computers and our trained information professionals are available to help students succeed,” she said.

Bullied when she was a girl, author and illustrator Frieda Wishinsky got payback by using her childhood persecutor as source material for her books. So Long Stinky Queen (Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2000) is about two elementary school students who turn the tables on a bossy classmate, while You’re Mean, Lily Jean! (Albert Whitman, 2011), shows how a little girl finds a funny, effective way to stand up to her older sister’s overbearing new friend.

Wishinsky, the author and illustrator of over 60 picture books, says that her experience of being bullied taught her the importance of asserting herself. One of several authors participating in “Bullying in Books for Youth,” a New York Public Library Children’s Literary Salon on October 20, she advises using humor to outsmart bullies, much as her characters have done.

Authors Paul Griffin, Madeline George, and others on the panel, which coincides with National Bullying Prevention Month, discussed their personal encounters with cruel classmates, the healing power of books, and their advice to young people today—the bulliers along with the bullied.

Like Wishinsky, author Susane Colasanti drew from her own experiences when writing her semi-autobiographical novel Keep Holding On (Viking, 2012) about an abused girl who is teased and taunted by cruel classmates. “My purpose with every book is to reach out to teens and help them feel less alone,” she said.

Moderator Betsy Bird, NYPL youth material specialist and School Library Journal blogger, observed that current books often give the topic nuanced treatment by blurring the lines between bully and victim or by depicting perpetrators sympathetically. For instance, Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers (Scholastic, 2012), about two boys who take revenge on their tormenter with a series of pranks that soon become far worse than the original bullying.

Others concurred that the persecutor/victim divide is not always so clear. Paul Griffin, who has worked with incarcerated and at-risk teens since 1989, observed that bullies themselves are often victims of abuse. His own young adult novel, Stay with Me (Dial, 2011), includes a scene where a persecuted boy lashes back at his attacker, becoming a victimizer himself.

Similarly, author Colasanti imbued the antagonist of Keep Holding On (Viking, 2012) with a complex backstory and motivation for her malicious actions. Like Griffin, she feels that books showing bullies as well-developed, realistic characters, rather than one-dimensional villains, are much more powerful.

The authors also touched on how books can lead to positive changes in the lives of their readers. Griffin described an experience with a troubled teen during a school visit. One student responded enthusiastically when Griffin read a passage depicting a graphic act of brutality from one of his novels. Griffin learned that the teen was being severely bullied and was on the brink of violently retaliating. According to Griffin, “That kid that day needed to hear that scene” in order to voice his problems—bibliotherapy in action—and the author was able to ensure he received the support he needed.

George’s novel, Looks (Viking, 2008), about the unlikely bond between two outsiders—a silent overweight girl and a sharp-tongued anorexic poet—may provide therapeutic value of a different sort, she suggested. The book’s ambiguous ending offers only a “very slender thread of hope” that life will improve for her protagonists, she said. Panelists agreed that starkly realistic, honest works like this with uncertain resolution often resonate most with teens, as they did with George when she was a young adult.

Participants concurred that the best way for young people to cope with bullying is by having the courage to reach out to others. Griffin advocated getting young people together to discuss their problems, and Wishinsky agreed: “Don’t be that isolated kid, get a friend. If you can give anyone advice, it’s get a friend…so you’re not alone.”

Held at the at the New York Public Library, the speakers on the “The Changing Relationship Between Reader and Writer” panel discussed how much of their personal lives they share with readers. Moderator Karen Halpenny, vice president of Children’s Media Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to distributing quality media to kids and young adults, brought up author John Green’s relationship to his audience as an example of the problems that can arise from a strong online presence. Although Green is famous for his enthusiastic interaction with his readers, he includes a page on his Tumblr site in which he urges fans to observe appropriate behavior when contacting him—and asks them not to come to his house or locate his address.

Adele Griffin prefers to maintain a healthy distance from her fans. She talked about her respect for Newbery-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Katherine Paterson, and her approach to meeting fans. While Griffin feels a strong connection with the beloved children’s book author and appreciates her books, she found Paterson much more reserved in person. Similarly, Griffin strives to establish a sense of intimacy with her readers through her written work rather than through real life encounters.

Sheinmel addressed how her fans perceive her, as well as her sense of obligation toward them. Because her upcoming novel, Stone Girl (Knopf, 2012), about a teenager coping with anorexia and bulimia, is based on personal experience, she feels a duty to handle body image issues responsibly when talking to readers. While the advanced reader copy of Stone Girl included a note detailing her own history with these disorders, Sheinmel ultimately decided to remove it, saying that she didn’t want it to affect the way fans viewed either her or her work.

Michael Northrop discussed interactions with adult fans. Because writers usually show a carefully crafted, optimal persona when communicating with fans online, he believes that some fans mistake these positive interactions for real friendship. However, he acknowledged that this response is simply part of being a writer with an online presence.

The authors also described the most effective ways of using social media to connect to fans. Gayle Forman devotes much time and energy into blogging, usually taking an entire day to compose a post. Though she finds blogging time-consuming, she prefers it to Twitter because she enjoys the opportunity to have longer, more drawn out conversations with her readers through the comments section.

While the writers feel that establishing an online identity can be challenging, they all remain committed to their fans.

For more coverage of KidLitCon 2012, please see our article on Critical Reviewing in the Age of Twitter.