It's part of the current trend of hyper-moralization. "Moral exactitude is now so important that we examine all art with a fine-toothed comb for any possible transgression." I don't mean that book revisions are unthinkable evils, they happen all the time. Plenty of famous works were revised both by the author and posthumously, often to appeal to a wider audience. After all, authors like money too. And in the digital age I'm not too worried we'll lose access to the Nth edition of anything far reaching (books I mean, I do think other media can disappear).

What's interesting is the trend itself, after decades of liberation why are we on eggshells? Is this emergent or a purposeful effort? What is this doing to current art? How much longer will this persist?

I suspect it's related to the extreme "partyism" we see today. Moral issues are now political issues. And while our personal lives have been liberated, our politics are both judged harshly and used as our identity. I think new art is suffering, that interesting things don't thrive in a partisan environment: this is the popularity-fueled echo chamber you're probably aware of. I don't want to believe this will last long, I want to say that people are losing interest in their dogma and want to hear new music again. But I'm not confident in that at all, I feel the trend has yet to peak.

The quote above ( https://artofericwayne.com/2020/08/01/hyper-moralization-the... ) is talking specifically about people actively removing art, but I see the same hyper-moralization inspiring these book revisions.