I'm a newbie, so only versioned tarball is acceptable?

You're missing a description on the immediate value-add to updating this. But regardless, this is going to need a new package maintainer given the previous individual that updated it is no longer providing patches to the project.

Oh, you're right, pdfsam (3.3.7->4.1.1), am I need to correct it or waiting for a new package maintainer?

I'd prefer if you added the description of value-add so I can properly triage it. It doesn't need to be an essay, just some features or bug fixes you would find valuable :)

After that I'll add the necessary tags to indicate it needs a new maintainer.

This has to wait until we update our opendjk to openjdk-11