My Junior year I had to buy a textbook "bundle" for one of my classes. It was a spanish class and I had to buy it. It cost $250. That was for one class.

This wouldn't be an issue at all from a technological standpoint. However, it took a giant like Apple to finally spearhead an initiative like this, so it stands to reason they're going to focus on one of their own platforms.

I could easily see Google trying to compete with this via Google Books, and I'm actually somewhat surprised Apple beat them to the punch.

Was a college student.  Graduated.

Then later on I actually ran shipping and receiving for a college bookstore and got to see the ins and outs of things.

Not taking 1-2 year old books back in buyback would just be stupid.... since you could offer at least a small amount then make a good profit selling them to Nebraska Books en masse.  That's what we always did with old editions that we weren't going to use anymore but Nebraska still had on their "pull" list.

And they usually go 2-3 editions backwords.

Who said I was content on how things work?

I'm just telling you WHY things work.  You haven't really offered any solution to how to make them work differently.

If your wondering why New editions are cheaper then old editions... it's because they can print more of them at one time because they will replace most of the earlier edition eventually.

Why they update it so much with the more useless updates?  Imagine trying to run a textbook publishing buisness if you didn't.

If instead of every 2-4 years every textbook you had updated more like every 8-10 years....

How do you keep a consistent buisness running like that?  Your workforce needs would drastically change year to year, as you'd need to print 1 million textbooks one year, then like...  20,000 the next.  You'd be hiring and firing people left and right, have to retrain people...

Sure you could try and stagger your books, but then you lose one major edition... and you'd go bankrupt.

E-books, ironically could be the change to that.  Though at the loss of a lot of jobs. 

Why not do it on a Kindle? Much cheaper.

I'm pretty sure textbook writers purposely make a couple mistakes, just so they have something to fix/change for the next edition of the book. 

...the same reason voice recognition can suddenly only be feasable with kinect... marketing

Reading on laptop for me hurt my eyes way more than reading on ipad + laptops battery sucks anyway.

As a consumer I don't care how a business is run. All I care about is quality and price. Right now textbook publishers run things like a racket. They make deals with schools and control distributions. Students have no power in the matter when the schools says you need a new edition and the textbook companies print new ones every year. It's not like other books that come out as hardback, then get released as trade paperbacks and so on. And it's not like other consumer goods that consumers can choose not to buy in favor of a competitor. The school tells them what book to buy and the only choice they have is where to buy it from. The only choice a student has is whether or not to go to school. Any other free markets can't get away with price fixing, but students don't have the same consumer power that keeps business in check in the rest of the retail world.

You want a solution, here it is. Universities stop dictating the book purchases of their students. If students where allowed to buy any edition, within reason, then students would have the power to completely avoid overpriced new editions. The publishers would then be forced to compete with the lower prices of used books and they would get smarter about how they make them and how the publisher them. Like I said I'm a consumer so I don't care if business get bought out by more successful companies or if people get laid off. As a consumer I only care about the product I choose to spend my money on and if I'm getting a good deal.

If you aren't content with the textbook / university industries and how they put unfair burden on students, what are some of your solutions? I make no claim that my ideas are perfect. I'm just saying that the system is broken and should be fixed. I don't care how it's fixed so long as the end result is reasonably priced books and healthy secondary market.

I think computer hardware companies who's names don't start with "A" and their logo isn;t a half eaten piece of fruit will realise that straight tablets aren't where their success will lie. I think ultrabooks with touchscreens are where the non-fruity hardware makers will see success, they'll be in tablets because they can't leave that to the frutiy company alone. But the fruity company won't put a touch screen on their laptops because that will cannibalise their own tablet market.

My textbook is the world-wide web, esp Google scholar. Schools really should make use of Google scholar and actually subscribe to many of the major research journals. Put students on the cutting edge. Textbooks are always years behind the forefront of research in any subject. And e-textbooks (and i ones too) will be the same.

Textbooks, as such, should become a thing of by-gone ages students should seek out information from diverse sources and come together to talk about what they found and where. What are the controversies on a subject and what are the universally agreed truths. Textbooks don't teach you to think, seek anbd learn, they teach you to memorise and regurgitate.

I defy anyone to write their masters or PhD thesis on a tablet without a keyboard attachment, in which case it's a low powered laptop in drag.