How do we solve this issue? 

My suggestion is that academics cut out the publishers and sell books directly to students. 

Publish through Amazon, or sell pdfs via some website like Gumroad.

Tools like Grammarly and chatgpt can help with proofreading, editing and similar services provided by the publisher.

You might be able to make the same profit (which for most academic authors is not much anyway) while pricing the book much lower, because publishers won't be taking 80% of the profit. 

Thoughts?