I think if someone wants to change a published book (beyond typos and slight word changes to make, say, horse names consistent from book to book), they should provide the altered chapters on their website, for free. This is especially true of series, but with stand-alone books as well.

I look at it this way: I bought a book (or a movie) with the understanding that what I read or watch is a finished product. Every finished product is going to have some flaws, and that's fine, but as a reader, I want to know that the story that I just read is the story. Going forward, there is a consistent and official version of what I just read, and everyone I might discuss it with is on the same page.

With "corrected editions" and "director's cuts," that understanding is gone. My experience as an early buyer is suddenly different from that of someone who picked the story up ten years later. Did WoR. I would say yes, because that is what my read-through showed happening, but now I would be wrong.

Whether or not the changes are for the better, it puts the reader in a bad situation. Do you hold off buying a book when it's released, on the off-chance that the author didn't actually mean what (s)he wrote the first go-round? Or do you buy it and then find yourself with a flawed or flat-out wrong version of the book, in which you don't have the full story you thought you paid for? Do you then shell out another $7.99 for a nearly-identical copy of the book, just so you can read the now-canon version of the story you thought you already owned, or do you share your passion with people who have a different experience of the "same" book?

And at what point does the line shift between "oh, I was just fixing a couple of tiny mistakes" and "Buy the Ultra Special Bonus Edition, with 2 deleted scenes that will blow your mind! You can't be a real fan unless you own all seven special versions of this book"?

As a reader, I would much rather put up with a book with wonky streets and potentially slightly out-of-character actions than I would the alternative. If an author wants to say, "Okay, as a bonus, here are my thoughts about how this scene would have gone now that I've had a few years to think about it," great. That's exactly the sort of bonus content Sanderson has on his website already. But to say, "Here, guys, now your version of the book I sold you is wrong. If you buy the book again, though, you'll get the real version this time," is insulting (I should add in here that I don't believe at all that Sanderson means to be insulting, or is trying to pull one over on his fans. He's clearly just tweaking something he wasn't happy with in his own work, and that's something we all want to do sometimes. I just don't think he's thought it through from a reader's or a long-term perspective).