@DB @SirW00f - "With so much at stake, how did we get into this turgid mess? In the 1980s and '90s, a feeding frenzy broke out among publishing houses as they all fought to swallow their competitors: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich bought Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Houghton Mifflin bought D.C. Heath and Co. McGraw-Hill bought Macmillan. Silver Burdett bought Ginn -- or was it Ginn that bought Silver? It doesn't matter, because soon enough both were devoured by Prentice Hall, which in turn was gobbled up by Simon & Schuster. Then, in the late '90s, even bigger corporations began circling. Almost all the familiar textbook brands of yore vanished or ended up in the bellies of just four big sharks: Pearson, a British company; Vivendi Universal, a French firm; Reed Elsevier, a British-Dutch concern; and McGraw-Hill, the lone American-owned textbook conglomerate. This concentration of money and power caused dramatic changes. In 1974, there were 22 major basal reading programs; now there are five or six. As the number of basals (in all subject areas) shrank, so did editorial staffs." https://www.edutopia.org/textbook-publishing-controversy
