I teach at a Big Ten University, and I fully agree that the price structure of textbooks is totally out of control. But I was hoping to see this writer address the other side of the issue as well. I've been told by publishers that they only have about one year to make a profit on any given textbook, before pirate editions appear online from Asia. I have no idea if this is true or not, but the acquisitions editor I was talking to seemed to be a pretty straight up guy, so it did lead me to wonder if that's what's driving this insane increase in prices.