I had sent an inquiry to City Lights from their website, asking about whether this volume was indeed going to happen, and the publishing editor responded. As you know, Bill, I share the name of a certain person who had a little something to do with Black Sparrow Press, and I received an e-mail indicating that he really wanted to talk to me about this. Well, after we got the facts sorted out (I'm not him, in other words), I mentioned that I had an idea or two about what the Buk-buying public might want to see for this publication. He e-mailed back saying that he would like to hear my idea, and I told him how I thought that Buk fans would love to see a deluxe hard cover; something akin to what BSP used to put out. I also mentioned what you said above; I bet they could sell them out because there's a pretty big market.
I never heard back from him after that, which really isn't too surprising. Apart from the fact that City Lights doesn't do many hard covers, being a scientist doesn't carry too much weight in the publishing business, apparently. ;)
Edited to add: I'm just thinking that this is where you may have heard about a possible hard cover, because I had posted that earlier. Obviously, I have nothing to do with this book other than wanting to own it. Perhaps someone is actively working on a hard cover, which would be great.