While a lot of great points have been brought up, nobody seems to have adressed the shift that happened within the studio itself, popularly called "new KyoAni vs. old KyoAni".

In 2003-2012 era, KyoAni have been steadily adapting light novels/manga for Kadokawa and visual novels by Key fan-termed "old KyoAni". However, after Hyouka KyoAni started doing only adaptions of only their own light novel brands, often termed "new KyoAni".

This led to a shift in anime. Old KyoAni was known for only animating blockbuster anime, more or less. These include Haruhi, Lucky Star, Clannad and K-on, all shows which are among the best selling anime of all time. The high popularity also resulted in tons of original content being produced online for these anime and practically dominating many anime fora (for instance, at it's height being an anime fan meant you had to have watched Haruhi). In contrast, their newer shows (bar Free!) have not sold as well, nor seem to have sparked the same amounts of reaction among fans like their old shows would. Why? Personally I think it's because their own LN adaptions lack the stories of their older adaptions. There is no doubt that KyoAni is among the highest study out there in terms of production quality, but it all just sort of falls flat when the story isn't interesting. Overall, it feels like wasted potential when you compare it to their Kadokawa/Key adaptions. This means that some fans of KyoAni like me loved their older shows while not really warming up to their newer ones. This doesn't effectively stop me from watching and appreciating them, but at the same time I can't help but feel the shows would be better if they adapted something from proper LNs.

The decision to adapt their own LN labels was a financial decision by KyoAni. This way, they now get the income from LN sales aswell, effectively earning more money than just from disc sales alone (as LNs sell much better than blu-rays).