Christopher, we still don't know where the decision came from, only that it didn't come from Bad Robot.
No, we know it didn't come from Roberto Orci, and by implication his fellow writer-producers of the film. There's more to the Bad Robot corporation than just those individuals.
And there's no way this comes from Pocket. As you yourself acknowledge, there's no commercial sense to that decision. Pocket is hurt by this financially, so there's no way they would've made this choice unilaterally. Besides, Pocket/S&S advertised these books in their catalog just a week before the decision was made. Doesn't that in itself make it clear that the decision came from outside of Pocket?
And no, the MyrU anthology was not on the schedule, having been backburnered continually.
It was indeed on the schedule, although its position on the schedule was changed. It was initially announced for November '09, then bumped to summer '10. Now it's scheduled for November '10. So far from being unscheduled and put in now to fill the summer gap, it's actually been bumped
out of the summer and delayed until the winter. That's not a consequence of the Abramsverse delays. It's presumably a consequence of the prior editorial upheavals at Pocket.
...and where is Slings and Arrows, the last of the CoE trades, or the Crucible HC which could also fill in May if everything stays where it is?
Like I said, having a backlog serves a purpose, as a safety net for future schedule hiccups. Pocket probably doesn't want to exhaust its entire backlog all at once. Also, an omnibus reprint of a set of e-books does require a certain amount of time and effort to tweak the format, give the authors the chance to make additional corrections, get it typeset, and so forth. Given the short notice here (another reason why it's absurd to think Pocket would've made this decision voluntarily), two CoE trades might be the most they can manage in the time available. Simple reprints are probably a bit easier.
Besides, as stated, Laurell K. Hamilton is a huge name, and Alan Dean Foster's novelization sold very well too. These books were expected to be big sellers (despite the cockamamie hypotheses of a certain poster), and the folks in charge at Pocket/S&S may have figured that e-book reprints alone wouldn't have done enough to compensate for their removal from the schedule. Plugging in reprints from two of the best-selling names available makes good business sense, at least given the options available.
(Caveat: I'm not privy to the decision-making process, just making educated guesses.)
There may be a reason that everything, or nearly everything, on the backburner has been pushed onto the schedule, since there are now 4 nuTOS books which can be used for a rainy day.
That doesn't make sense. The backburnered books
are what Pocket has set aside for a rainy day. The rainy day is the shelving of the Abrams books. There's no conceivable reason, to go back to my previous metaphor, why Pocket would tear out their main parachute so they could turn it into a reserve chute and then use their reserve chute as their main chute. You're overcomplicating this to a totally unnecessary degree. Pocket wanted to publish these books, other players higher on the totem pole required them to shelve them, and they were forced to fill the gap with their backup material. It's as simple as that.
I mean, what does it do when it's not rolling around in that wheatfield?
