[darksaga]

Great point. I had a friend who worked as a salesmen at Thomson West when they still owned Thomson Learning which published all their academic materials. To say the industry is entrenched is an understatement. My friend told me once a publisher was in with a university, there was virtually no way other publishers could get in there. Even the professors had little or no say who they could buy their books from.

It's a few steps removed from organized crime.

[mturmon]

That's weird to hear. Lots of professors use their own textbooks in their undergrad and (especially) graduate classes (e.g., Yaser Abu-Mostafa uses his own textbook for http://www.work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html).

Also, there are certain canonical texts that are used almost universally across all universities during a certain time frame (say, the CLR algorithms book, or the Cover and Thomas information theory book).