I love the backlist. Hearts, flowers, insert its name into song lyrics kind of love. And, yet, when the Penguin Group says that libraries can’t have access to the new books that we purchased access to on behalf of our patrons–that we’ll probably still be allowed to lend some of their dusty old unsellable backlist, I take offense. Really, Penguin? Libraries are the problem?

You’re mad at Amazon.com and your taking it out on us. (I”m not the first person to come up with this theory. I just had nothing to back it up.)Your authors are jumping ship to “self” publish with Amazon. Amazon has a pipeline to its customers that you can’t even dream of. Amazon went out and built an eReader from scratch so that they could sell people your books in yet another format. And you’re going take your titles off of our digital shelves? And blame security issues?

You don’t have to fear libraries, Penguin.You don’t even have to respect us. But if you don’t think that we’re kind of smart and really pretty awesome at organizing stuff, then you’re going to be really, really surprised. Oh, and we’re the PR equivalent of holding a puppy. You really don’t want your picture taken kicking us.