With all the evidence I've seen, I do believe that to be the case as well. First of all, they weren't able to even show pictures of the CE or its contents for a long time. Also, there's this recent tweet.
I guess it all boils down to the same cause as the scant communication: backer rewards didn't receive the attention and love they'd have deserved. Mind you, personally I am happy with the box, but haven't yet looked at the contents. The novellas are a different issue, but I've already voiced my opinion on those. Perhaps there's at least the chance that we'll receive Colin's novella in print that way, but I am not counting on it.
All in all it's really a bit disappointing, if you see how other projects go about the physical goods:
Sure, that's no guarantee that the end result will turn out any better than the TToN CE, but at least it shows that the physical rewards are properly prioritized.As you know, this game has a lot of custom made physical feelies that are being produced alongside the game itself. [...] Coordinating production and quality control of these items is more challenging that you'd expect, so we started on some of these items sooner rather than later.