Well first of all thank your for your comments and offer of help, I appreciate the gesture. But I think I need to clarify my position also. It isn't a question of needing help to persuade Llewellyn, at least not from my perspective. Because without going into specific details, suffice to say that based on past experience and my reference of having self published several decks, there is ironically no additional benefit to me of a mass market version, because in the absence of one, there is more demand for the special edition.
The regret I referred to earlier is simply based on quantity. When you invest months and years of work into a project, obviously there is more satisfaction and emotional reward from knowing that a larger number of people own and use your work rather than less.
The benefit of persuading Llewellyn to reconsider would be that anyone interested in the deck would have the option of a mass market one at less than half the price.
Llewellyn clearly felt there would be a risk to tamper with the current version, or they simply couldn't be bothered to. Interestingly that decision came after having seen only one early sample image, which suggests a rejection of the idea rather than any serious appraisal of the actual look. Ironically they are probably less familar with images of this deck than you are.