Does CGL still have production files for stuff like shattered fortress, the field manuals and era reports? Because based on e-bay prices and lack of any copies on amazon, there is a market for at least a small reprint run of some books. I know I'd pick up or POD shattered fortress and field manuals 3145 & 3085.
I see it's time for my semi-annual refrain of "what's the deal with POD?"
I think you're conflating two concepts: print-on-demand through DriveThruRPG, and reprint runs. We've done a few volumes in POD through DTRPG, including
Wars of Reaving, and I'm always agitating for more. True reprint runs of sourcebooks, as in, "here are the files Mr. Printer, please print X more so we can put them into regular retail distribution" are vanishingly unlikely for many reasons.
I'm a big supporter of POD, because, to me, it's an obvious method of monetizing (some of, but not all of) the back catalog for those who prefer DTF. Moreover, it allows us to keep available books that are important for customers returning to BT or just getting in, but which we aren't likely to re-create in some new format. For example, Wars of Reaving got done because a) we'd just done a major Clan Invasion era Kickstarter which brought a lot of people back into the game, but b) the "current" era was now 100 years in the future from that point, requiring c) a way for Clan-fans to catch up on what happened in the years in between.
Imagine you played in the 90s, loved the Clans, fell out of the game, got reeled back in by the KS, wanted to get up to date on the newest era--but Wars of Reaving was unavailable, or $100 on the secondary market. That's a huge feel-bad, and a big barrier for buy-in to the ilClan era. I wouldn't blame that hypothetical customer for saying, "well, guess I've got what I'm going to get, I'll just stay here in the Clan Invasion era where I've got everything I need to play."
The hold-up with POD is that there is set-up work required--I've said before, we can't just e-mail a PDF file to DTRPG. While the benefits of POD are clear, unfortunately that set-up work is hard to prioritize because we're short of people who can do it, and we need them making the new stuff, not mining the old. However, we've recently started having conversations about getting POD moving again. ER3145 and Shattered Fortress are at the top of my list, along with FM3145 if we can grok what to do about the color plates in there. (FM3085 would have the same issue with the plates, but is personally a bit less of a priority than the key books needed to bridge into ilClan era.)
I would also love to get physical copies of some of their older books, like Jihad Conspiracies and Interstellar Expeditions.
The further back you go, the more difficult POD becomes. Those two books at least are CGL era, so I'd be more optimistic that we have what we'd need to someday POD them. FanPro and FASA-era stuff gets dicey fast. When POD comes up, among the top 10 books everyone asks for are the FASA House sourcebooks, but we'd be rebuilding them essentially from scratch, down to the level of probably re-typing them or heavily, heavily proofing an OCR scan.
