Right. The cost of textbooks is outrageous and any scheme that can reduce their cost should be tried. The most objectionable and outrageous trick major publish

Right. The cost of textbooks is outrageous and any scheme that can reduce their cost should be tried. The most objectionable and outrageous trick major publishers do is to regularly bring out new editions wherein they deliberately change the the chapter and exercise numbers, this then almost renders older editions useless for any student who has one cannot easily follow what's going on. When the teacher says go to exercise number '123' and their book says '89' an inordinate amount of time is wasted chasing up fellow students with newer books to help identity it. This not only seriously disadvantages poorer less well off students but also it's wasteful on resources as older books are just dumped as the consequence and become landfill. In my opinion, publishers who are caught doing this ought to be blackballed by universities, educational institutions, etc. in that they not recommend those textbooks for their courses.