Are textbooks too expensive?

An article on CNN reports the new political debate regarding the "high" prices of textbooks. There are a number of problems with the discussion in the article. I just decided to enumerate a few of them:
1. The student estimates he spend $4,500 for a career in college on textbooks. My guess is that he choose to ignore the fact that he probably was able to sell them back for a figure less than that which would probably lower that figure by 60%. The article later states that the average student pays $900 per year on textbooks and supplies, which is no where near what this guy spent. That figure also excludes the resale value.
2. Ambiguous regulations for professors to be cost-conscious. I do not know a professor who does not take this approach already. While there is technically an incentive for professors to choose high prices, there is much more incentive to choose the best book at the lowest price. If I choose the most expensive book, it probably would only earn me an extra few dollars on the resale market. However I would lose much more valuable time in answering questions for students who do not buy the book because it is too expensive or do not understand the book because it does not match my lecture very well. Chances are this regulation would do much more harm than good.
3. Textbooks are the "hidden" costs of education. This was claimed by Rep. Frank Moe. Frank apparently believes people are systematically stupid. Everyone knows that they will spend money on books and they include that estimate in their own cost-benefit analysis of enrollment. While they may over or underestimate the cost, on average they will be right. To say that no-one realizes the costs of textbooks is equivalent to saying everyone who plays darts will miss the bulls-eye to the left.
4. Much of the article is accurate in explaining why textbooks are expensive relative to other books, but they miss a big one. Comparatively low sales volume and a used book market that cannibalizes future sales are good reasons to expect prices to be high relative to the books at Barnes & Noble, but local monopoly power is a big reason too. See fellow Econ professor John Whitehead's blog post against high book costs for his students for a nice explanation.
5. "The textbook industry pulls in more than $6.5 billion dollars a year...." I don't know what this means, or what it is supposed to imply. It sounds like from the sentence that this is the industry revenue, which means nothing as profits might be really low due to costs. I don't know if this is the case or not, but I also think that there are many textbook companies, so this would be distributed among many suppliers and the economic profit would be low. I also suspect that this is a risky industry, so we should expect there to be some economic profit.
6. What is the alternative? Regulations will increase costs, causing prices to rise. You can pretty much guarantee that if the university or the government takes over the industry, both its quality will decline and prices will rise. Just look at the post office, DMV.
7. Rick Howden complains of buying books he never opens. Whose fault is that? If you weren't going to use it, why did you buy it in the first place?