So there's my solution to Paizo's quandary. :) I doubt offering two print versions will make much financial sense, but two PDFs (or one big one with both versions) should be doable. Especially since statting 4th Ed monster will take hardly any time at all apparently! :P
Paizo has said they probably will not go this route since they, for all tense and purposes will have to make two different games and they just don't have that kind of manpower (or something similar to that atleast). Paizo has a rep of quality and they'll have to work with two different rules sets at the same time. Knowing two while having them as balanced as they are known for won't be easy.
Also, the first post of this thread makes some excellent points.
They're all good points. I was pretty sure someone else had thought of this before me. :)
It's pretty likely that many of us will be doing our own conversions.
I fully intend to start converting Rise of the Runelords to 4th Ed. as soon as the rules come out, as my way of learning the new rules. If Paizo were to switch to 4th Ed., I'm sure there will be plenty of folks who are sticking with 3.5 who will be doing their own conversions. And while threads on the messageboards are nice for discussions of conversions...
I think it would be SWEET if Paizo had a "Fan Conversion Notes" section (or a formal, visible link to such a section ofDMTools) where we could post such conversions, and people could rate them. For example, maybe in June there could be a specific messageboard section for 4E Conversions (of currently-3.5 products) with a sticky thread at the top reminding people to post their finished work at DM Tools, and to look there for existing files?
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Even if it were possible (and it probably isn't), it wouldn't suit me very well. While I download all of my PDFs, I'm only interested in product I can physically hold. That's what I use at my table, and what I plan to use for a long time to come. Needing to print up all the 3.x material to use at the table wouldn't work for me.
Stay 3.5 and offer 4E rules in pdf.
I hear that 4e monsters are supposed to be easy to create and all that, and they tell us character generation is faster and all that.
So your idea is really the best one, since the optonal stuff (i.e. the 4e stuff) would be the stuff that's faster to make.