There might not be that much demand. My understanding is that a good printing of a book will only make money back in pretty large amounts; if there's only a thousand weirdos in the world who want to buy it (and I'm one of those thousand), it'll only barely break even, if that.
Actually, I'm wrong, there is a newly published version that costs under a hundred bucks.
And honestly pretty great, unless you are a collector. It's well done.
The book itself is beautiful and haunting. But I don't think it's for everyone... I have a copy, and I gifted one to someone in my family who really didn't understand the point.
I think this is sort of just what publishing looks like for super niche books. Academic books are a rip off for other reasons too, but they also have the issue that only a very small number of copies are expected to sell, smaller runs means comparatively bigger overheads, means more expensive books.
You might think the publisher would ........ publish some to sell.