The only real future for the publish industry that I see, with regard to course literature, is if they either create an outstanding service themselves or work together with the universities. I don't really see any drawback with electronic books that won't solve itself by time.

The publishing industry faces some of the same challenges that the music industry did when the mp3 players started to become available. And similar to then people will start to think of books as data, and not psychical things. They need to realize this and make the most of it themselves, and not make litigation and DRM part of their business plan.