I have to ask, why the massive delay on the pdf/book (assuming of course Opti wasn't being sarcastic and I'm not just being a moron)? If the actual book was being sold at gen con why wait so long to sell it to a wide audience. I understand a week or so to get it into stores, but almost a month? That seems like it would be a massive waste of resources. Was it just bad planning?
Well, depends on how much lead time there was between the book being ready to print, and GenCon. If it was, say, enough time that they could get a small run off in time to sell at the con, but the longer runs for actual distribution weren't ready, and they then need to filter through their distributors, to the stores, and so on... Especially if they missed a deadline to be included in distributor catalogs that went to the local stores so they could order the books...
Yeah, I could see a month wait on the dead tree versions. The delay on the PDF version, then, would be an attempt to have the PDF come out closer to when the dead trees would be hitting stores.
But that's just my wild guess.