The wholesale price of the textbooks is the problem. Publishers and campus Bookstores need the money just as much as online retailers do, and students also need money.

Crimson Reading's operations sound quite similar to what some particularly tech-savvy students at my university did in creating a database that tracked what books students were willing to sell, and what books were needed for a particular course.

The bookstore in response began putting little stickers over the ISBN's. This was as effective as peeing into a forest fire.