I did some advocacy in a project that was supported under my last startup, http://www.opentextbook.org/ http://www.opentextbook.org/ A huge amount of the cost

I did some advocacy in a project that was supported under my last startup, http://www.opentextbook.org/ http://www.opentextbook.org/ A huge amount of the cost is in publisher fees rather than material cost. And the quality is appalling at times - check out Richard Feynman's writings about just how bad it can get (panels of textbook reviewers recommending books that were blank other than a book cover). The quality of online sources is great, but physical books are going to be necessary for a long time. To that end, check out connexions (here's a video detailing what it's about: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_...) for very high quality stuff. There are certainly some areas which don't need expensive copyrighted textbooks. Please keep us up to date on your findings, this is a topic dear to a lot of the hn crowd.