They could be ...

When I've talked about this idea having been tried for about/over a decade I was including the countless times it was tried for laptops.

The idea is not new, the technology is not new, and neither the technology nor the idea had anything to do with it not being adopted. More than anything else, the battle with digital textbooks is a political battle

Did you watch the video about it? These new interactive textbooks can only work devices with multitouch screens and for acidemic purposes, using something like an iPad would be more practical than a laptop. Also, they introduced new software that makes designing textbooks quicker and easier, which aside from digitizing the text book, quicker production times would make textbooks far less expensive to make.

I may have exaggerated and I did misspeak when I questioned buying new books every year. I didn't mean to suggest people take the same classes over and over again. Although some sequences of classes will use the same text, by splitting the book between levels. What I meant was why do students have to buy 2012 books when a subject like math could use the same book for decades? Is a math book from 1980 wrong? Has history been rewritten since the printing of the 1990 edition of U.S. History? The textbook industry is s total scam. They make deals with schools so they can keep printing books even when nobody needs a new book. On top of that the books are overpriced just like the classes. A college degree shouldn't put someone in debt for the rest of their life. The cost of textbooks may not be the biggest part of the cost of an education, but it shouldn't be as high as it is.

Don't try to tell me that books cost so much because that's how much they cost. Unlike other publications textbook companies know how many sales they'll have before they print due to school contracts. There is absolutely no reason why a textbook should cost more than a brand new copy of Harry Potter.

Why is it that a coffee table book on the history of the U.S., with color pictures, costs a fraction of a college text book for U.S. History 101? I'll tell you why and it's not because the content is so much more reliable. It's because college students have accepted the universal screw job they've been given and textbook companies and colleges just keep taking advantage of them. If more people would choose cheaper school and community colleges instead of believing the fallacy that big schools mean better educations/higher salaries, than there would be real competition. It would drive down costs and up the quality all around.

When I was in college I almost never bought new books from the school bookstore. After my freshman year I figured out how big of a scam it was when I tried to sell them back to the bookstore. From then on I'd buy used books online for a fraction of the cost.  Many times I would buy old "outdated" editions that literaly cost pennies. Guess what? Those "outdated" books where nearly identicle to the new books my classmates had. I never ran into any issues using the older books. One of my professors actualy recommended an old edition to a class because he knew they were the same.

Textbooks are a scam, plain and simple.

Textbooks really are no longer outragously expencive. For last semester, I bought all my textbooks on amazon and traded them in for 70-100% of what I payed for them back to amazon. Yes its still ridiculous that I am paying over 50$ for a book, but as long as I can trade in that book for nearly the same value its not really that big of a deal. I do pity those who used bookstores though. 80$ to rent a book. 150$ to buy a book that they will buy back from you for 30$. Just awful. 

What bothers me the most though is that at least in my school, classes have started including online homework. And unless you get the access code by buying the newest edition of the book new, you need to buy the access code online for 55$. Now that is ridiculous. So the money I pay to attend classes is not enough... I need to pay extra to do the actual homework for the class.... And ofc I also need to buy a clicker device to be able to get a participation grade in my lecture classes. The netcost of all my textbooks after trading in the ones I no longer needed was about 50$. But the homework access codes cost me 160$.

Sure, but someone needs to pay up first.

Hm, this post seems out of order, so I'll reply to it out of order.

1) Untrue actually.  Bookstores have about a semester and a half to return any unsold books to the publisher for a full refund.

I know because I ran shipping and receiveing for a college bookstore who's bookbuyer was paralyzed with fear about missing any return dates even of books we were planning to reuse the next semester because they might change their mind.

2) Actually they don't so much "make deals" with colleges so much as force colleges to switch to a new edition.  Like I said, for colleges the price of new books from publishers INCREASES every year.  For example, our store relied on a strict "25%" margin on books.  Whatever the books cost us we raised the price 25% to cover all our overhead and such.  So Calculus VOL 12 cost 100, so we sold it for $125.  The next year it was 150, so we sell it for $190.   The next year it's $250 and a new edition comes out for $100.

Now the choice is either, keep going on and raise the new price to $312 and hope we can find enough used books. (Which is a lot harder then you'd think hence why the new books cost more each year) or Just buy the new edition so everyone can pay $125 rather then have people stuck with the new books having to pay a huge sum of money.

A lot of students outright REFUSE to use used books too.  Mostly because they're on government book programs or scholarship programs that pay for their books no matter the cost.

Also, you'd be surprised how much history changes over the years...

3) As for Math.  Actually often the teaching methods change... while Math hasn't changed, math is a hard thing for a lot of people to get, so they're always looking for new ways to make teaching it easier, additionally classes like the social and hard sceinces obviously need pretty frequent updates as research can often change what is being made.   Really it all depends what your studying.

4) Because the US is essentially subsidizing the cost of other countries whose textbooks are cheaper.  Well that and history books are generally written by one person and ecompasing a LOT more then your basic coffee table book and have WAY more refrences.

Do you really believe text books should cost so much or are you just a contrarian? You can list as many excuses as you want, but the truth is text books are overpriced and take advantage of students.

So in otherwords... you have no arguements for the points mentioned.

Although i hardly brought up anything actually related to pricing more then just correct your many misconceptions about how the industry works. (Guranteed sales, deals with colleges).

Heck, I didn't even go into many reasons publishers charge the prices they do.  (many of the reasons actually valid.)

Do I think textbooks should cost as much as they do?

Depends on the subject and class.

Most 101 books should cost as much as they do now because they're actually a hell of a lot harder to produce then other textbooks.    You often need to get multiple professors with access to huge libraries of work and journals to spend a few months coming through everything to write comphensivly about a subject for your textbook, instead of doing projects that will further their own prestige and career.  That costs a decent amount of money.  Espiecally considering your in a competition vs other textbook makers to get the best experts you can... and being a college proffessor is already a pretty comfortable lifestyle for the elites.

A lot of higher level classes shouldn't be using textbooks at all though and should be run off printouts and copies of the orginal works related to it. 

I'm not going to argue your "facts". I'll take your word for it. While you seem to be content with how things work, I am not.

You say new editions cost less than old editions. I say there is no reason for the new editions to exist unless they are so out of date they can't be used for teaching anymore.

You say text books cost a lot to write and publish. I say they should keep rewriting them when all they need to do is send out companion updates.

We do agree on one thing, high lever classes shouldn't use textbooks. I'll go one further, most classes don't need text books. We don't really need math books. We just need good teachers/professors and printouts. Classes that require heavy reading like History and biology need textbooks but history shouldn't be revised as much as it is and even though new theories and new discoveries add to science they don't fundamentally change their respective areas of study so much that a handout from a professor couldn't correct.

I want to apologies for calling you a contrarian. I still find it flabbergasting that anyone can defend the price of textbooks or educations in general. The cost of a degree shouldn't put a person in debt for the rest of their life.

I've no idea whether your a student, but as a student of FAU I can confirm that new textbooks are introduced for most classes I've been in, typically at the end of each year. Sometimes it's every two years for some of the bigger books. But every time I don't have time to turn in my books at the end of the year, I find next semester that they aren't taking them anymore because they are "old editions".