This is fantastic news! I mean, the writing has been on the wall for some time, but now it's actually happening. This will rid CGL of a great many problems going forward, I imagine - money will no longer be tied up in small print runs, hopefully lowering the revenue hurdles for new products being pushed out of the gate.
To be clear - we're not going to do POD for all new sourcebooks from now on. POD is primarily intended for making out-of-print books available again, and collecting previously PDF-only product, such as Touring the Stars or Spotlight On.
There are a few reasons for this, but one of the big ones is shelf presence in stores. Our marketing funnel is nowhere near developed enough to be able to take a new customer from "my friends and I bought this box set in our LGS and loved it, where do I get more?" to "here's the one website where you can find the big new book." It's more than sticking a flyer in the box set; it requires a comprehensive, integrated marketing strategy, and we're not there.
For another, the economics of selling a new book via retail and the CGL webstore vs. selling it POD via DTRPG are different. One is more favorable than the other. So don't assume "everything will be POD now." It won't be.
Great decision on WoR. Prices for the original print run are absurd right now if you can even find a copy
They really are. Though, secondary market prices are not really a factor in our prioritizing which books to resurrect with POD. It's much more important that they compliment sales of new product, and vice versa.
As I said in my website post announcing this, Wars of Reaving is definitely a "sought-after" book (read as: north of $200 on Amazon and eBay), but think about its place in the timeline, too. We're in the middle of delivering a major KS based on the Clan Invasion. We're about to move into the ilClan era. There's a rather obvious gaping hole in the Clan story between those two points, no? "Man, I got back into BT with the KS, can't wait to buy more. I love the Clans, what happens to them next?" "Sorry, that book has been out of print for almost a decade." What a buzzkill for a new customer! With this POD resurrection ability now available, Wars was a no-brainer first choice.
The WoR Supplemental was purely an epub when released, I don't think it's ever been a DTF.
True, it would be nice if the two were bundled together. The question is whether it can be done from a practical standpoint.
I'm told that it was considered - not sure what the plans for it might be going forward. I suspect that simply stapling it onto the end of the main WOR book was too much of a hurdle from a layout/set-up standpoint, on top of what it took to get Wars ready to go anyway. We're aware of its absence, is the best I can say. Good part is that it's always been PDF-only, and is still available. Nothing's been lost, unlike a print book no longer being in print--just nothing gained.