Stock change for print releases?

I noticed that the print versions of Half-Ripe Cherry and Tits! Tits! Tits! seem to be printed on a slightly different stock compared to earlier releases (compared to my copies of Renai Sample and Bashful Break, for example, the stock seems to be slightly thinner than before). Is this just because of the reality of trying to get things printed in the age of Coronavirus or will this be the new normal going forward?

This has been something that's been going on for quite a while now (about 2 years) However if your previous experiences have been from older titles like Renai Sample I can see why it might be surprising.

I've stated in other threads discussing this, but worth mentioning again is the reason we've changed paper stock is purely to keep it closer to the original Japanese edition. The materials are exactly the same, just a slight difference in paper weight. If you look at some of our older titles compared to the original Japanese you'd actually see that ours were thicker than the original titles. This especially got noticeable in how it could be impractical when we started doing larger titles like the Urotsukidoji omnibuses where it was more cumbersome to hold. The change was purely a quality of life improvement to make it easier to hold/open without breaking a spine and to be more identical to the original titles.

With that in mind, regarding COVID-19, there hasn't and there won't be any impact in quality of releases. What impacts there have been have simply been delays. We have a COVID-19 thread where you can read here if you're interested in reading a bit more about it: Book Releases and COVID-19

Ah, okay. I had been wondering. And no I had not seen that post; I will confess I don't check the forums much.