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In defense of "Big Publishing," it's worth noting that college textbooks are a unique niche of the publishing industry. The cost of publishing a college textbook isn't any lower than the cost of publishing any other hardcover book (in fact, it's usually higher since these tend to be large books), but the market for these books is so small that the publishing cost per book tends to be extremely high.

In my industry we run into a problem like this on the software side. Software tools for the work we do are custom-made and extremely expensive because there simply aren't enough buyers to make it worthwhile for anyone to create and market something "off the shelf."

Oh heck, I've spent 10 years on the digital side in the publishing industry, for a publisher with small runs. It is NOT a big deal to take the existing QuarkXpress or InDesign file and turn it into an e-book. Redoing a website for downloadables is more expensive, but not much different than for any other business.

Also, print-on-demand has gotten almost reasonable for doing most textbooks. Bye bye inventory.

Regarding the small, "non-profit" bookstores, I've not seen many in a big school that was customer friendly or well laid-out. The small ones have so little overhead it is not an issue.

I am not a modern, but any change would be better than the stupid way school text books have been handled.