From my experience there are a handful of publishers and when it comes time to pick a book we look at the relevant book from the publishers and pick whichever w

From my experience there are a handful of publishers and when it comes time to pick a book we look at the relevant book from the publishers and pick whichever we want. That being said, we don't have any control over them releasing a new version. I've had the book store tell me I had to order a new version because they couldn't get the previous one. (and of course the only difference was one or two paragraphs per chapter...) As far as the scenario of "what happens if prof doesn't like chapter 10," more and more publishers are pushing "customized texts" which we can decide what chapters we want and they will publish it on demand. My last year at my phd program they switched to a book which was combined from readings and chapters from a variety of books. The reason publishers love this is, of course, that students have to buy the book from them because the book we use at Any Town State is unique and can't be bought used from Amazon or something. So instead of being a benefit to the student it is just another scam to squeeze more money out of students.