AWL Settles with NACS
by John Mutter -- Publishers Weekly, 2/2/1997
Addison Wesley Longman has reached an agreement with the National Association of College Stores that settles NACS's price discrimination lawsuit against the publisher (News, July 28, 1997). Under the agreement, AWL has established a new pricing program for retailers that will eliminate almost all the dual discounting practices that were at the heart of the NACS suit.The new pricing plan calls for AWL to categorize most books published by AWL's higher education and computer and engineering groups as trade, professional or text titles and charge the applicable standard discount to all customers, regardless of the type of store or size of order. For example, all AWL books categorized as trade will be sold at a 47% discount to trade and college stores alike. Professional titles will have a 37% discount, while textbooks will have a 20% discount.
Under dual discounting as practiced by some publishers, trade titles sold in large quantities to college stores - presumably for classroom use - were sold at a low text discount. A small number of reference titles will continue to be subject to dual discounting, depending on order size.
NACS lawyer Marc Fleischaker of Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin &Kohn in Washington, D.C., said that the NACS suit against Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press is continuing. Both defendants filed motions to dismiss the case, which were denied by the judge. The case is in the discovery phase, and NACS will start taking depositions shortly.
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