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That's often the only thing that actually substantially changes between editions. Shuffle the exercise numbers and change the font and spacing and voila, brand new edition completely incompatible with older versions!

If that’s true, can’t there be some consumer class-action applied?

Class actions, like any lawsuit, require a law to be broken.

If the teachers are helpful, this would not be an issue. In most places I went to, teachers understood, and some peer always helped people with older textbooks. For problem set additions or extra chapters or pages, we used to photocopy those pages before high-res cameras became a norm in mobile phones.

What school was this? I would never send myself or a child to a school that exploited us like that.