What are they thinking? » The way it used to be
Several decades ago, textbooks were produced by many different competing publishing houses. This competition produced a variety of unique, creative books.
However, in the 1980s and 90s, these companies began to buy out each other, trying to eliminate the competition. Now four huge multinational corporations dominate the entire field of textbook publication: Pearson (a British company), Vivendi Universal (a French company), Reed Elsevier (British-Dutch), and McGraw-Hill (the only American-owned textbook corporation).
So instead of variety and individuality among secular textbooks, we now have imitative, less diversified texts that seek the largest possible market for the least investment.
Find out how the textbook publishing industry works today.