date published ATTN Jaclyn

[Tawnya]

Jaclyn, I have two issues I wish to discuss.

The first concerns the editions page. Why on earth does the sorting pull-down menu have “original date published” as an option? That is that master date, and therefore the same for ALL of the books. It is showing on the page already.

The second thing is a bit convoluted. I apologize in advance for how poorly I tried to get my thought across.

I have been going through my oldest books and I realized something. Now that the bots are auto-importing the Audibles the published dates are wrong. I don’t do audiobooks since I am hard of hearing, so I do not know if this is the case for everyone. This is just my experience. When I first became a librarian, I started with the authors that I had first read on my Kindle since they were the ones whose works I was familiar with. I updated the covers of the books that I own and added some of the missing Audibles. The earliest books have had three cover changes. I corrected the dates using what I know about when the author released new covers. As I said earlier, I added SOME of the audiobooks. The bots have added all of the Audibles to every book. That would be fine, except now they have the original cover’s date with the newest cover. Some of those books didn’t even have an Audible on Amazon. Sorting by the date published now has books that were released years later showing as the earliest editions. That is due to the bots using the date the original cover was used. That has always been an issue with Kindles as well. The date on Amazon is the date the book was published with that ASIN. It never gives the true date for that edition of the book. I had stopped adding the Audibles around the eleventh book (which is oddly the only book of the series that does NOT have an Audible on Amazon). Because of that, the books from twelve until 30-something did not have an Audible edition. They do now, with those new covers. I can change the dates since I know when the cover change happened, but I do not have access to what those original Audible covers looked like to create an edition with the date showing on Amazon. Because of Amazon’s draconian practice (which seems to have started in 2018) for Kindle Unlimited and Audibles those original editions have been pulled from every outlet.

The whole reason for all of that prattle was to ask for Kindles and Audibles ONLY, if we should start just using the dates on Amazon. It would be logical for people who do not know that the cover showing on Amazon isn’t from the year given to believe that is what we should have as well. It seems with printed books the new covers mostly (but not always) have updated when the book was published. My Kindle will sometimes tell me which edition of the book I am reading, but again, not always.

I know how spotty Amazon’s information can be, especially for older books. I try to find verification elsewhere since I have learned how truly wrong Amazon can be. They have yet to correct any item that I reported. Here we are talking about their own products, so they are usually correct.

[Jaclyn, Librarian Program Manager]

Hi Tawnya. For the "original publication date" the best bet is to email support, who can ensure that feedback is recorded and guided to the correct team (you can tell them I suggested you email in if that's helpful).

For your second question, can you provide me with some examples so I can take a closer look and get feedback from the team.

[Tawnya]

The specific author I was talking about in my message is R.L. King, but it is what happens to every author that I have seen, which is hundreds.

The issue with the Kindle dates is nothing new. All of them show the date when the book was first published, many times this is before Amazon even existed as a company, much less having the Kindle platform.

For example, the first Kindle was released in November 2007. And yet this Kindle (which the bots created in 2022 and is no longer a working ASIN) is supposedly from May 2005 Angels & Demons. That is the cover that was being used in the US, but there is no way that a Kindle was using it, since they didn't exist yet. If there was an e-book equivalent, it is not on our records.

That author released all new covers this year, so I have been slowly updating the books. The active Kindle, Angels & Demons, is now on its third cover. Looking at the log isn't helpful for figuring out anything since the bots spent 4 pages! changing the title back-and-forth. The first entry should have stated when the edition was created. It does not. The Amazon page shows May 3, 2005 as the date published. It also doesn't have the corrected publisher listed. Of course, the publishers themselves don't always show the new cover date. Even the authors don't give the dates. Dan's page for the book shows the new cover, but there in no mention of the date. He updated his page this year as well to match the new motif of the books. I tried to place a link to his page and the Amazon one, but the system kicked it back. I get not allowing Dan's, but Amazon should have been fine. If the owner's own pages as suspect, what does that say for our security?

I use tin-eye to correct dates of cover changes, but that isn't infallible. About 20% of the time, I will not get any hits. It should at least find the images on GoodReads. I doubt many librarians have the mental issues I have. lol My family was happy when a side effect of one of my meds was being less OCD about the house. That was a long time ago. I am now physically unable to do anything with the house anymore. Goodreads has replaced that need for things to be "clean".

So, as you can see the dates are seemingly impossible to keep track of.