Paper: This issue came up a while back in this thread. I'll repeat the jist of my answer then.
Like any company (or individual for that matter), we occasionally reexamine the deals we have with vendors that provide us with ongoing services. We recently went through that process with our printer, and we ended up changing printers. The factors that went into the decision were manyfold: cost, certainly, but also quality, scheduling capabilities, shipping issues, and so on.
We did not change the specifications of our books. In other words, we required the new vendor to meet the exact same specifications as the old printer, and that includes paper specs. However, the new vendor gets their paper from a different supplier, and that can lead to minor differences in the "feel" of the paper.
The long and short of it: The paper in our newer books isn't any thinner than the paper in our older titles, even though it may have a slightly different surface characteristic. In fact, the new vendor's paper is actually considered a slightly higher grade than paper than the paper we previously used.
For those not convinced, here's a simple test: Lay Lords of Madness down on your dining-room table. Lay an older 224-page D&D book (Unearthed Arcana, for example) down next to it, edge-to-edge. You'll see that they're exactly the same thickness. If one of the books had thinner paper, there'd be a quite noticeable difference in their thicknesses.
Now, all that said, even though the new vendor was giving us a slightly higher-grade paper, we've asked them to go to the same supplier as our old vendor and get the exact same paper we used in the past. We listened to your comments, and since you were more comfortable with the paper we've used in the past, we're going back to it. You won't see that change for another couple months (printing is done some time in advance), but expect to see it soon!
Bindings: This issue sort of follows the discussion above; it relates to our change in print vendors.
Our new printer is a major U.S. printing company with an excellent reputation; that was one of the things that attracted us to them. Unfortunately, in the few months they've been working for us there have been some, well, lets call it "hiccups," in the transition. There have been flaws in several books. Some of them have been very minor--the sort of thing most people would never notice but which bug the heck out of us--and some have been quite substantial. In fact, we've made them go back and completely reprint a couple of books from scratch.
One of the problems involved the bindings on Lords of Madness. Because this problem only affected some of the books, not the entire print run, we didn't catch it until the books had shipped. We recalled all of the books that were in the distribution channel and had the printer reprint it. The books currently on the marketplace should all be the reprints, but some books from the first batch had already been sold when we issued the recall, and some in the channels might not have made it back to us. In other words, there's a small chance you might have (or get) one of the bad books.
If you have a copy of Lords of Madness with a shoddy binding (or any D&D product that's defective--in any print run, there's always a tiny percentage of product that's not up to snuff), contact WotC Customer Service (custserv@wizards.com). We're always happy to replace bad product.
I hope that answers your questions. Feel free to post more if you have them!
