[emerod]

Nothing has changed in the last 20 years in terms of the economic model for the textbook publishing industry. The strategy is still about how to create artificial demand with useless features and how to create artificial scarcity with exclusive deals. Yes, 20 years ago they really were literally taking the same product (like, the same text and photos) from 20 years before and jacking up the price 1000% by putting fake "revised edition" labels on them. Now that production costs have dropped, distribution costs have dropped, and sources of information have exploded, they are looking for new ways to jazz up old content to appeal to students and professors. But it is the same hopelessly corrupt and wasteful industry.