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Textbooks will (and should) go the way of encyclopedias. The publishers charge ludicrous prices for textbooks. Whether print versions or electronic versions.
And they have been doing this forever. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for some textbooks back in college - and that was in the 70's! I remember paying exorbitant prices for the two encyclopedia sets that our family owns. The publishers made such profits on those books that they could afford to send a personal salesman out to your house to convince you to buy the things. These encyclopedias are still on our shelves. But untouched for decades. Who needs them anymore? You can get the information faster, cheaper, and more up-to-date elsewhere now.
The same thing will happen to textbooks. But the publishers want to squeeze more profit out of them before they finally go the way of the dinosaurs. So it doesn't really surprise me that they are going all out in finding new ways to get paid two, three, or more times for a product that they charged a ridiculous price for in the first place. Picture a dinosaur hanging onto the side of a cliff by their fingernails, trying to escape their fate. That's the textbook publishers.
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