You can mess with Texas more than you used to could

This year, as states weigh which textbooks to buy, many "are going to be asking whether this was the book that went to Texas," said Kathy Mickey, an analyst at Simba Information, a market research firm.

The influence of Texas on the $7 billion U.S. textbook market has steadily weakened.

Technology has made it easier and more affordable for publishers to tailor textbooks to different standards. That's especially true in the 20 other states like Texas where education boards approve textbooks for statewide use.

Substitutions are an easy fix. And publishers won't gamble on incorporating one state's controversial curriculum into a one-size-fits-all product for other markets, said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.

Diskey's group is the trade group for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson Education Inc., which together publish more than 75 percent of the nation's K-12 textbooks.

"Why would we walk in with stuff that we know might be rejected and knock us out of a business opportunity?" Diskey said.