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Still bewildered that at a moment when DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is at the absolute zenith of its popularity, there is virtually zero tie-in fiction being produced for it (bar a single annual Bob Salvatore novel).
Compare this to the absolute nadir of D&D's popularity and sales, around 1997-99 and 2011-12, when the base game was barely shifting (and in the former case drove the company out of business), but TSR and WotC were publishing a dozen or more D&D novels every single year.
Apparently Hasbro (who own Wizard of the Coast and thus D&D) didn't see the value of running a fiction imprint as it didn't match their brand ID so terminated the entire fiction line and outsourced all their licences to other publishers.
Which is fine, but it made publishing new D&D fiction a rather unappealing proposition unless the author was a proven mega-seller, like Salvatore (30 million+ sales and growing, more than every D&D rulebook ever published, combined).
For pretty much every other author in the business, it's impossible to justify the licencing cost to Hasbro on the basis of the solid-but-not-massive sales, so there's no business justification in doing it.
So if Hasbro themselves were still the publishers, no problem because they don't need to worry about the licence, but for 3rd party publishers, there's no incentive to do it. Which if D&D was still a steady but unspectacular performer would be one thing.
But right now D&D is nuclear hot. 2019 was the biggest year in the game's history, 5th Edition has outsold any previous edition of the rules, the movie is happening (if with agonising slowness), there's a slam-dunk hit video game (BALDUR'S GATE III) coming up etc.
So right now is the ideal time to launch new D&D fiction. But the licencing fee arrangement makes it a rather risky venture, so the 3rd party publishers are holding fire and playing it safe, and that means no more fiction for the time being.
The only other exception I can see being made is if Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman agreed to write a new Dragonlance novel or trilogy, as their sales are comparable to Salvatore's. Other than that, no-one else (not even Ed Greenwood or Paul Kemp) are in the right sales bracket.
The amount of potential money that is being left on the table here is quite remarkable. The combined Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novel series made cumulatively quite a lot of money even without the really big hitters.
