Unfortunately, for the most part of the world, schoolbooks still are written the same way: Pretty long preparation phase, followed by a very short evaluation phase, followed by some politicians deciding whether the book will be the official book for counties/states/countries. The same politicians who would have to answer future students, why they did not intervene when the [then] hero was incarcerated for the same thing she is applauded for in some Utopos.

They really aren't. If you want to scratch your head, read about Bowker and ISBN.

So I just googled "Bowker", never having heard of them before, but I have a suspicion Google only serves me the version of the story that Bowker itself is telling the world. However, using wikipedia:

> "Bowker is the exclusive U.S. agent for issuing International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs), a universal method of identifying books in print. (...) It is now owned by Cambridge Information Group."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.R._Bowker

Cambridge Information Group? click

> "Cambridge Information Group (CIG) is a privately owned group of information services and publishing companies and educational institutions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Information_Group

Ok... that kind of sounds like conflicts of interest waiting to happen. Not to mention ISBNs being the kind of fundamental infrastructure/natural monopoly combination where I definitely would not want to see a for-profit entity be in charge of it.

But that's just my gut-feelings. How does this set-up play out in practice?

Well researched, apologies for my sloth!

In a nutshell they have a monopoly and their fees for licensing are extortionate - and they won't even talk to you unless you're "very serious".

They crushed a startup I consulted with eight years or so ago by playing along and then vastly increasing their fees just prior to launch.

Also, their only API (I haven't checked but I doubt things have changed) is EDI.

So, they have important and valuable data that they don't like to license, and make hard to access when they do.

I don't think that something of such importance should be in the hands of a private entity.

Maybe someone could use the blockchain to issue some kind of ISBN numbers...

School curriculum's are though.