Why haven't universities moved to textbook subscriptions
kyro: I don't know of any service that does that, but I've been toying around with a similar idea for some time - a service that helps students rent textbooks from others, make deposits, track who's renting my books, etc. Students would then compete on their rental fees. I figured it'd be a good way for students to make some side cash, seeing as how a lot of the times, students have a hard time selling their texts at the end of the term, and the buy-back programs set up by the schools themselves can give you something like only 30% of what you originally paid to purchase the text, which is really nothing at all.