I don't think the author did anything on purpose. Amazon's publishing date has a glitch and it changes every time you update your file.

 

I think every time you go back to your book and edit it, it chooses that date. It's happened to me a few times. I published a book in Jan 2013, made changes in December, and the date changed to December 2013. I quickly went back and changed it to Jan 2013. I don't think authors notice the change of publishing date.

 

Yeah, it used to leave the original publication date there, but a few months ago it started updating the date every time I uploaded a new version. It doesn't really put the book back on the new releases list, does it? If so, I'm sure they'll fix that bug soon.

The "new" publication date does put the book back on the "Hot New Releases" list. I have seen several books which have been on the list for several consecutive months. I'm pretty sure many of the authors aren't consciously aware that this is happening to their books, but I wouldn't be surprised if some are taking advantage of the glitch.

I actually emailed Amazon about this today, and received a fairly vague reply saying that some authors publish updates to their books as "complete new submissions," and the system identifies them as "new releases" and automatically updates the publication date listed on the website. I doubt this is the case with many of the books I have seen. The email from Amazon ended with: "We will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters."

Hmmm.

Karen

 

One of my books got put on the new releases list when I updated it even though its a couple years old. Got a few extra sales out of it. So no complaints from my end.

 

Has anyone emailed Jeff Bezos about this? It's getting ridiculous. I can understand a glitch that lasts for a week or even a month, but I haven't gotten the impression anyone is working to fix this. The few people who have reported emailing KDP about it get responses that show a lack of understanding of the actual problem.