I was thinking about the outsourceing topic while I was putting out breakfast (it's a great time for reflection and personal thoughts) and I don't think it would be a viable option. I'm takeing a few liberties in this example since I don't know what the actual linces is and if I misuderstand how this works please let me know.
So lets say the deal is, between LA and WoTC, that all the profits from the sales of the books is split down the middle 50-50 (for simplicities sake). So if a $40 book grants a $10 profit (again for simplicity) that would mean LA gets $5 for each book and WoTC gets $5.
Now say WoTC decides to outsourse the books to another companey, Fell Incorperated (it's like Kids incorperated, though more sining) and they split the propit 66-33. So now on that same book sale LA would get $5, WoTC would get $3 and FI would get $2.
I'm haveing a real hard time seeing how that would be worth FI's investment. I don't think one could build a sucsessful busniess plan around that, especialy when we allready know WoTC wasn't makeing money when they made $5 a sale.
Now, that's assumeing WoTC wasn't publishing the books anymore. If they were, why bother outsourceing when they could just keep on hireing Feelance writers like they tend to do?
One more thing that might lead to my mistake (ie that WoTC couldn't outsource) being true. If you look at the back, and on the inside of any of the SW books from Wizards you don't see anywhere they book being owned or copyrited to WoTC. In fact the books are puplished as a LucasBook, not a WoTC publication. All the Copyrights are listed thusly "© 200x Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM All rights Reserved. Used under authorization". Now that would leave one to think that WoTC dosen't actualy own anything they're publishing, so how could they outsource the RPG to another company?