First let me say that those of us teaching the courses in college have little to no control over textbook prices. I cannot dictate how much the store buys back books for, or even if they buy books back. The publisher decides when new editions come out, and accrediting agencies mandate new editions every so many years. My colleagues and I definitely take price into consideration when choosing new books, but the price range doesn’t always allow for much flexibility.
An interesting alternative to the traditional textbook is the ebook. In my opinion electronic books hold a lot of potential in the educational market, but only if some severe shortcomings can be addressed. The biggest problem is one of availability. A quick search of the major ebook retailers (amazon.com, fictionwise, and mobipocket) so few, if any, undergraduate science texts (my discipline). This isn’t surprising when you peruse the large textbook companies (i.e. Prentice Hall) and find all ebooks linked to purchase of the hardcover book (an added benefit I guess). So before we can even consider ebooks as an alternative we have to get the major publishers to come on board. Hopefully the entry of the big name Amazon.com into the market will cause publishers to reevaluate their positions.
The second problem to address is the state of technology in ebook readers. There are two technology solutions available, the dedicated reader (Sony Ereader and Amazon Kindle being the major players) and the software solution on portable computers (mobipocket reader and microsoft reader). The dedicated readers offer a greater selection of books (esp. the Kindle), but are limited by their black and white eink screens. I know some would disagree, but frankly I think it is impossible to write a good intro text in biology without the use of color. Software solutions allow the use of color, but are tied to larger systems. To me the current ideal is the use of mobipocket on a windows mobile PDA (later in the year mobipocket is supposed to be out on the iPod Touch). Hopefully in the near future we will see a color eink device to fill in the current gaps.
Hopefully these shortcomings can be corrected and ebooks find a place in the educational market… but we will have to wait and see.