Bring back... Novels with previous Doctors.

I'm sure that once James Goss has wrung the last out of the Douglas Adams archive, they'll commission something with a different Doctor to the fourth.

Like, with subtitles?  And having to to turn the pages manually, like a caveman?

It would be nice to have a more frequent range of books for the classic Doctors again. There are just some stories Big Finish can't tell with certain characters anymore - the Brogadier, Sarah Jane, Liz Shaw, Evelyn - without resorting to recasting, short trips, or a lot of narration. Books have no such restriction (unless by copyright). I think that would be appealing to a lot of writers who've wanted to write another epic six parter (or longer) with Sarah Jane and the Doctor, but can't do it through audio.

I do have an idea for a 12th Doctor Book which at the end of this year would become a Past Doctor adventure lol

There used to be over twenty novels a year, half covering the current Doctor, half covering past Docs. Now we usually get about four. Three current, one past (sometimes just a novelisation). Last year we got one whole novel.

It's sad, really. In comics and on audio, Doctor Who is thriving. But the section of the expanded universe that really kept the ship afloat during the Wilderness Years is barely around anymore.

Understandably in 2005 the books went from being aimed at older teenage boys and above to skewing all ages when the show came back. A perfectly good decision - the only one really - but one that stopped me buying them after checking out the first few Eccleston ones. They were OK adventures but they were like reading a run of the mill Target in terms of scope and prose. As someone who grew up with the VNAs and the Missing Adventures, then the 8DAs and PDAs it was too much of a regression for me to really get into. The books pre-2005 were never consistent but they were more advanced reads and being in my 20s when the show came back the new series books weren't for me, nor were they aimed at me. The tonal shift was like going from Torchwood to Sarah Jane Adventures and it happened relatively quickly once the show was on air again. Probably for the best - I don't know how old you were in the early 2000s but Who books were not as easy to find as a new series fan would imagine. I had to get the suitably titled John Smith's bookshop to order them in for me as they were never on shelves and even Forbidden Planet didn't carry them towards the end. 

It's a shame there couldn't have been more past Doctor stories written in a more mature style but I stuggle to be bitter about not getting more of the "adult" books - we got a few hundred titles out of it. Not a bad innings and we do get the odd few still. And it was undeniably exciting to see a whole new generation of fans come along and - gasp - Doctor Who to become mainstream. You'd see the books everywhere in the RTD era. 

In the Doctor Forever documentary series on the DVDs, we learned the Beeb were very, very keen to ensure the new Doctor would be the only "current" one and RTD had to personally intervene to prevent the licence for BF being pulled. Imagine a world where that happened...the Main Range would have ended at 65 or so. We'd have had No Lucie Miller. No Companion Chronicles. No Jago & Litefoot. No Tom Baker. Those New Who books and the rest of the new series merch nearly cost us the last 12 years!

Right, but I wasn't referring to "more adult" to mean things like people getting shot, or the subject matter itself. More the general prose styles, the themes underpinning a lot of the stories, the density and use of the language itself. Again, I've only read the first wave from years ago but they were written in a way that just didn't work for me as an adult beyond being fun little reads. I've no idea how old you are and if you were younger than me when reading them.They were too..I don't want to say juvenile as thats more dismissive that I intend (especially since they were supposed to be kid-friendly!)... but after a decade of the Virgin books, the BBC ones and the much underrated Telos Novellas the new series ones just weren't for me. Even though God knows some of the books in the wilderness years deserve to remain in the wilderness.  

What I guess I'm saying is that the new series essentially ended the commissioning of books for adults because for the first time since the Target heyday the market for Doctor Who was full of kids again and you don't get a Lawrence Miles or a David Bishop to write kids books. It meant that, as the OP implies, there was really a very sudden gap in the market thats never really been filled since. You wouldn't get an Alien Bodies, Damaged Goods, Witch Hunters or an Interference in the post-2005 Who market and that's a wee bit sad for those of us who grew up with Doctor Who as a series of books just as much as a TV show. 

There are quite a few mature New Series Adventures.

Among them are Prisoner of the Daleks, The Eyeless, and Judgement of the Judoon.

That's...that's just stupid.

No different in principle from bf's lost stories surely?

Given the commercial potential of the name Douglas Adams on the cover one can understand the publisher's rationale.