Peter Brantley pointed me to an interesting experiment from Pearson Custom Publishing, who is working with faculty at Rio Solado community college in Arizona to print custom textbooks assembled from multiple sources. Inside Higher Ed has details:

The result, in what could be the first institution-wide initiative of its kind, will be a savings to students of up to 50 percent, the college estimates, as well as a savings of time to faculty, who often find themselves revising course materials to keep pace with continuously updated editions.
…Professors can pick from among the books in Pearson’s library as well as outside sources in preparing their custom textbooks. For works not published by Pearson, there’s a limit of 10 percent of the contents, but the company will then handle copyright clearance.

I recently read in the Times about a similar service from Condé Nast for individualized cookbooks culled, à la carte as it were, from the Epicurious.com recipe library.