Hi Charles,
Please would you consider the following. Absolutely no rush if it's too late for this development cycle.
For the 'Date published' field if you group-by-first-letters it is equivalent to grouping by millennium which probably isn't very meaningful for most book collections, or is it
? Would you consider making it mean group by decade instead (e.g. 1960-69, 1970-79 etc.) In other words, something like you did for the Pages and Words custom columns.