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It's almost always a matter of rights on older works. Rights, and the cost of creating a new version, because older works almost never, ever exist on the publisher's computer any more. So it's got to be scanned and OCRed (and, hopefully, proofed well, but we know how that works out), or just retyped in, and those things cost money. And that assumes they have electronic rights, which they may not agree with the author on the value of.
So it all comes down to money: is the money spent on republishing an old work going to bring in a better return on the investment than the same money spent on a new book. And the answer is all too often, no, it's more profitable to buy rights to a new book, especially compared to a long out of print work by an established author who feels his older works are worth a lot more than a new work by an unknown.
All you can do is try to get hold of the publishers, and the author, and tell both you'd like to see the older stuff reissued as ebooks. If they don't feel it's worth the trouble (or expense), you're out of luck.
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