Waiting in line to collect your overpriced books at the beginning of each semester is a college past time future generations might not experience.

Forbes explores:

Textbooks Are Going Digital, But Will That Put College Bookstores Out Of Business?

In the more than $10 billion dollar college textbook industry, students are captive consumers. Each semester during syllabus week, they face the infuriating task of spending hundreds of dollars on material they will never look at again after just a few months. The reason textbooks are so expensive? In a nutshell: because they can be, and in some cases, because they need to be.

In fall 2014, the average student spent $313 on an average of 5.3 course materials, according to research by the National Association of College Stores. On a single course, students spent an average of $71.23, NACS reports.

And prices are changing every day, notes Peter Corrigan, CEO of The University Network, which recently launched a search engine that looks for the lowest priced books in real time. Below you can see how the average price of ten major textbooks fluctuated just over a week.