Follett Responds to Lawsuit from Publishers Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill and Pearson Education

WESTCHESTER, Ill., June 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ Follett Corporation today provided the following statement in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of publishers comprised of Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill and Pearson Education:

"As the largest textbook customer of these publishers, Follett has been actively working for decades to identify and remove counterfeit books from inventory," said Ray Griffith, Follett Corporation's President and CEO."Counterfeits hurt everyone in the industry, and the solution requires a collaborative industry response.It's unfortunate these publishers don't agree with that approach."

Follett believes the intent of the lawsuit is to cripple the campus store's ability to provide lower-cost course material options, leaving students little choice but to buy higher priced texts from the publishers.Prior to this lawsuit, the publisher group had been pressuring Follett and other campus retailers and text distributors to adopt certain "best practices" created by the publishers that Follett believes would effectively restrict access to low-cost used and rental course materials on campus.

Follett's mission is to serve the physical and digital course material needs of its higher education institutional partners and their students through cost-saving options that include used textbooks and Follett's text rentals that offer an average savings of nearly half the cost of new texts from publishers. Follett also offers a number of digital academic tools and content solutions that save students money, including digital course materials, open educational resources (OER) content and courseware priced far below the cost of similar offerings from publishers.

For more information about Follett, visit www.follett.com.

About Follett Corporation

For more than 140 years, Follett has been a trusted partner to preK-12 schools, colleges and campus stores, taking care of the critical details that make it easier for schools to run, teachers to teach, students to learn and fans to celebrate. A leading provider of education technology, services and physical and digital content, Follett currently works with 70,000 schools and operates more than 1,250 local campus stores and 1,600 virtual stores. With the 2016 acquisition of Baker & Taylor, LLC, Follett's reach also extends into the public library and global retail markets. Today Follett Corporation is the world's largest single source of books, entertainment products, digital content and multi-media for libraries, schools and retailers. Follett is a $3.6 billion privately held company headquartered in Westchester, Illinois.

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