A Follow-up on the CRIV Conference Call with LexisNexis about the Company's Free eBook Companion Business Plan

In CRIV Conference Call with LexisNexis on eBook Plans, CRIV Chair Michelle Cosby lists the questions in topical order submitted to LexisNexis about the Company's free eBook-for-CD companion substitution plans. Several questions submitted by rank-and-file members that pertained to "pricing details" were not asked by CRIV. Hopefully they were forwarded unofficially to LN.

Alternatively, Michelle recommends that AALL-represented members (obviously library, not vendor, members) contact their LN reps about questions regarding their accounts. Many (as in most) in-house LN pBook-and-eBook reps for sales and customer service work in the Company's Albany office. As reported in an earlier CRIV Blog post, many (most?) Albany staffers will be experiencing staggered layoffs until the office is completely shut down by the end of 2014.

According to the conference call follow-up CRIV Blog post:

Lexis will make its own response to these questions, and CRIV will notify AALL members when that response is available.  In the meantime, Lexis has created a website that addresses some of the questions submitted by AALL Members available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/ebooks/resources/ .  The eBooks FAQ is available at http://www.lexisnexis.com/ebooks/questions/ .

(Emphasis added.)

CRIV deserves our thanks for addressing this matter in a timely manner. As previously observed, I doubted LN would be prepared to answer all the questions being submitted during the conference call because of the number of questions rank-and-file members asked and specificity of details that were asked in their questions. We'll just have to wait for the Company's response. 

While I am disappointed that all questions submitted to CRIV were not including, I'm not surprised. "Free" apparently is being construed by AALL national elected office holders and their hired hands as pertaining to "pricing details." One could make the case that "free" is one among many "pricing structures for e-books." Apparently only AALL's Vendor Liaison can talk to our so-called vendor partners about eBook pricing structures in the context of AALL's official vendors-know-best "business plans" policy for fair business practices. [JH]