Quote:
Originally Posted by stefano.sb
Hi jhowell, I think that when an author updates his ebook the "Edition Number" is also changed. See here https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200644080
Do you know if the "Edition number" is one field in the metadata.kfx file? If so it would be possible to identify an update into ebook considering the difference between the old value and new value of "edition number" field |
The edition number is not meant for the types of minor updates that occur for most e-books. It is a piece of metadata mostly used for reference books, such as college textbooks. New editions are often sold as separate new books, rather than provided as updates to existing books. And in any case it is not included in the metadata provided to the customer, as least not in KFX format.
Internally Amazon uses a 4-byte unique ID to distinguish between updated versions of the same book. This is part of the MOBI header in MOBI/KF8 format, but is not included in KFX. KFX has a book_id field that may serve a similar purpose, but I haven't looked into it enough to be certain.
It would be possible to detect changes to e-book files using a stored hash of the original content. That approach would be applicable to more than just Amazon.
In any case the handling of book updates is not really specific to KFX, would require significant work, and is not something that I am interested in pursuing.