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I had to take a philosophy course in college back in 1991, and the only class that fit my schedule was taught by a guy who had "his own" book out, that was the required text. Basically, it was a compendium of essays by the great philosophers, broken down into chapters, with italicized commentary from him before each chapter, consisting of one paragraph, to up to a page. He perhaps actually "wrote" 10 pages out of the 300 page text.

Cost for the book was $67, that was 10 years ago.

The production costs are significant, but the main costs come from heavy promotions, which include a cadre of textbook salespersons with an array of expense-account perks which are about as good as those any salespeople could offer, behind which is an actually rather good array of promotional features from computerized test banks to a rich variety of audio-visual supports to simple "payola" which accrues to the faculty member who adopts a textbook in the form of consultation fees, review honorariums, sometimes minor equipment, audio visual equipment, test banks and other amenities. A lot of this which comes in the package with a textbook adoption is good stuff and makes the course as presented better, in all probability, than any instructor could make it without the help. But it does drive up the cost, in the sense that the cost is entirely shifted to the product, and is recoverable only with the sale of the original edition, new. This, in turn, means that frequent revisions are necessary, not so much for scientific or philosphical reasons, but simply to keep the newest edition on the college bookstore shelf and thus to drive the used book prices down and hopefully drive a used book out because it does not contribute anything to the original publisher's bottom-line. The fact that a huge number of courses are taught by graduate students or relatively new teachers makes the kind of stuff that publishers offer to those who adopt their textbooks all the more attractive. Experienced teachers already have a lot of teaching "stuff" and are not so dependent on an outside source. Please bear in mind that the teachers could probably produce the AV and other material. They are smart enough and able enough, but they would need a great deal more preparation time and access to production equipment much better than they now have if they were to do it. In addition,this textbook and multi-media thing is embedded in school systems and it is slick. No teacher alone can make videos or CD's of classic experiments, for example, or even come close to the kind of quality that the textbook publishers can bring to a good supporting package for a course. But the fact will remain that you pay heavily in the bookstore for what helps make some of the classes you possibly cut sometimes rather interesting!