Textbooks represent an 11 billion dollar industry, up from $8 billion in 2014. Textbook publisher Pearson is the largest publisher—of any kind—in the world.

    It costs about $1 million to create a new textbook. A freshman textbook will have dozens of contributors, from subject-matter experts through graphic and layout artists to expert reviewers and classroom testers. Textbook publishers connect professors, instructors and students in ways that alternatives, such as open e-textbooks and open educational resources, simply do not. This connection happens not only by means of collaborative development, review and testing, but also at conferences where faculty regularly decide on their textbooks and curricula for the coming year.

    It is true that textbook publishers have recently reported losses, largely due to students renting or buying used print textbooks. But this can be chalked up to the excessively high cost of their books—which has increased over 1,000 percent since 1977. A restructuring of the textbook industry may well be in order. But this does not mean the end of the textbook itself.

    While they may not be as dynamic as an iPad, textbooks are not passive or lifeless. For example, over the centuries, they have simulated (模拟) dialogues in a number of ways. From 1800 to the present day, textbooks have done this by posing questions for students to answer inductively (归纳性地). That means students are asked to use their individual experience to come up with answers to general questions. Today’s psychology texts, for example, ask: “How much of your personality do you think you inherited?” while ones in physics say: “How can you predict where the ball you tossed will land?”

    Experts observe that “textbooks come in layers, something like an onion.” For an active learner, engaging with a textbook can be an interactive experience. Readers proceed at their own pace. They “customize” their books by engaging with different layers and linkages. Highlighting, Post-It notes, dog-ears and other techniques allow for further customization that students value in print books over digital forms of books.

解析：D。根据题干中的the publisher’s losses可定位到原文第三段。第三段第一句指出，教科书出版商最近宣称他们的确出现了亏损，这主要是由于学生租用或购买二手教科书导致的。根据后半句可知，学生租用和购买二手教科书，对新版印刷书的需求量自然就下降了，D项Falling sales（销售下降）指出版社卖出的新教材数量下降，故为正确答案。第二段指出纸质教材能满足学生的部分需求，而电子书和开放式教育资源不能满足这些需求，故A项错误。第三段最后一句指出，教科书产业的重组势在必行，但这并不意味着教科书本身的终结，但这并不能推出出版商损失的原因是产业重组，而是说出版商应该做的事是产业重组，故B项排除。原文虽然提到电子书和数字版图书的优点，但作者并没有提到这些优点是导致出版社亏损的原因，故C项排除。