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You are correct. When you publish as a business, you have finite resources, and you have a responsibility to your investors to use those resources wisely, in a way that will maximize the return on their investment. And a re-release of a backlist title will almost certainly sell less than a new release, because if that weren't likely true, it wouldn't have gone out of print. Plus, generally speaking, especially for older titles, it's probably quite a bit more work - man-hours of labor - to put an old title back in print than a new one, if only because the new one will come from the author in an electronic format, and the old one may well have to be completely re-typeset. Add in the complications of negotiating rights from an author who also knows there's more money for them in writing a new work, or worse, negotiating with an heir who finds their dream-chasing relative a little embarassing, and it gets even worse.
It's amazing to me that we see any out of print stuff reissued as ebooks.
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