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The switch from printed books to e-books is obviously going to be an expensive, disruptive and possibly profit-sapping process, which only makes current publishers extremely reluctant to change: If you were a publisher, would you willingly go through the extra work of creating an e-book that you could only sell if your printed book had to be cut to 50% of its price? Heck, no.
It's possible that what America needs (and what, thanks to the digital age, it is finally feasible to have) is a central, nationally-used, nationally-supported academic publisher for all schools.
So a national agency, under the wing of (or supported by) the Dept of Education, might be required. This tax-supported agency would produce educational texts that corresponded to the educational standards of the country, produced in e-texts that would be provided at no additional cost to all students when tuition was paid (or perhaps even available at no additional cost to all Americans).
There could still be traditional ed publishers, producing printed texts (or specialized e-texts) for those schools that sought a higher standard than the national one, and whose students were willing to pay higher fees for the privilege. But the new standard would be nationally-standardized free e-texts (read on student-optimized readers or laptops), provided by taxes, and used by most schools in the nation.
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