Kindle book update oddity

[jhowell]

I noticed yesterday that one of my previously purchased books, Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, showed a badge on the cover with "10,000 words of bonus content" when I loaded it onto my Kindle from Amazon's cloud. I looked inside the book and couldn't see anything new. I checked on the book's web page and that now shows a new title, "Elantris: Tenth Anniversary Author's Definitive Edition Kindle Edition", different from when I purchased the book.

It seems that this book has been updated to a new edition (with the same ASIN), but because I purchased the original edition that is what I get when I download the book. The original cover is still inside the book, but the cover for the new edition is shown on the Kindle book list. I guess that it is understandable behavior, but I didn't expect it to do that. I wanted to bring this up here in case any one else comes across the same thing.

As a side note this book doesn't show an update being available for me. When a publisher updates a book (keeping the original ASIN) they have the option of making the update available for previous purchasers, but that is not the default. From Amazon Updating Your Book and Notifying Customers of Book Updates:

You can update your book any time, and republish it with the changes. Customers who buy your book after you republish will receive the updates. Customers who purchased your book before you made changes will keep the original version. If you've made significant corrections to errors, you can ask us to make the updates available to customers who have older versions of your book.

I will ask customer service if they can let me have the new edition of the book. They have done that for me with other books in the past.

ETA: To summarize, the oddity is that Amazon keeps and sends you the original version/edition of the book you purchased, but delivers it to your devices with the cover thumbnail of the latest edition.

[eschwartz]

The cover thumbnail is derived (downloaded) from the Amazon product description rather than the book itself.
Always have, always will. I don't know why they don't extract it from the book like they do for PDOCs...

Apparently some new firmwares also delete your calibre-customized-and-sideloaded covers and download the original ones from Amazon.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I will ask customer service if they can let me have the new edition of the book. They have done that for me with other books in the past.

ETA: To summarize, the oddity is that Amazon keeps and sends you the original version/edition of the book you purchased, but delivers it to your devices with the cover thumbnail of the latest edition.

Thanks for the references.

I just got Amazon.co.uk to update a book

Hello,

Here's a copy of the chat transcript you requested:

Initial Question: I would like the new edition of a book I bought last year

London: A Visitor's Guide: 2016
**http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JUXW2E0/

05:06 PM GMT R: I have now updated the Kindle book and resent the Kindle book to your Kindle.
Please sync and check with it.
05:09 PM GMT LE : Thanks, yes it now says December 2015
05:09 PM GMT R: You're most welcome.
==

[krbo]

From a Brandon Sanderson's web about Elantris Tenth Anniversary Edition:

The ebook will update to this text, and if you’ve purchased Elantris in ebook you will get the tenth anniversary edition for free. On some ebook platforms like iBooks the update should happen automatically, and on other platforms like Kindle you have to email customer support and ask them to update your file. If—for some reason—you want to preserve the old text, you might want to make a backup of the file. (Tor books are DRM-free, so you should be able to do this.)

[jhowell]

I would like to share some further experiences with this.

I located another book in my account with the same issue. The edition of the book that I purchased and that downloads to my devices is slightly different from the edition that is current for the book as verified by examining the first few pages. The Amazon web page for the book shows "You purchased this item on August 20, 2012."

I attempted to re-purchase the book in order to get the updated version. Not surprisingly, I received an error message: "Instant Order Update. Our records show that you already purchased xxx on August 20, 2012."

This happened to be a free book. So next I removed all copies of the book from my devices and then went to "Manage Your Content and Devices" on-line and deleted the book from my account. After that I was able to re-purchase the book and it once again appeared in "Manage Your Content and Devices". However, when I downloaded it to one of my devices, I again received the original edition that I had before. It even restored my last reading position from when I had read the book previously.

I noticed an odd inconsistency after deleting and re-purchasing the book. The web page for the book now shows "You purchased this item on January 14, 2016.", but if I try to buy it again the error message is still "Instant Order Update. Our records show that you already purchased xxx on August 20, 2012."

So even if you want to pay to receive an updated version of a kindle book, Amazon will let you re-purchase it, but they won't actually give you the new content.

As another test I then loaned the book to my wife, who has her own Amazon account. When she downloaded the book she received the latest edition, not the one I have. So it seems that recipients of a loaned book do get the latest version, even if the sender doesn't have access to it.

[FizzyWater]

I wonder if you'd need to delete your Kindle's records (highlights, last placement, whatever) not just the actual book file, before you'd be able to redownload the newer one.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I wonder if you'd need to delete your Kindle's records (highlights, last placement, whatever) not just the actual book file, before you'd be able to redownload the newer one.

As far as I can tell nothing was left behind on the device after I deleted the book and before I re-purchased it.

[Cinisajoy]

Yes, this is a known problem. You will have to contact Amazon.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Apparently some new firmwares also delete your calibre-customized-and-sideloaded covers and download the original ones from Amazon.

I found my Voyage deleting my calibre-customized-TITLE (series #xx original title). In fact, when I deleted the original downloaded book, had Calibre alter the title and put it back, I disconnected the voyage and looked in the library of my downloaded books. The books with the new titles were there initially, but within seconds had removed themselves and were nowhere to be found.

I had already done this 2-3 times, including a kindle reset after the delete, and before sideloading the newly titled (& deDRMed) book. It was only on this final time that I was fast enough to see why my books didn't show up anywhere. They DID appear, initially, but as soon as the kindle contacted the cloud (i think) and saw the title mismatch, they disappeared from the kindle.

I finally gave up on re-titling them, and downloaded them again from the cloud, with amazon's original title. Are we not able to customize the title, if the book comes from amazon?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I found my Voyage deleting my calibre-customized-TITLE (series #xx original title). In fact, when I deleted the original downloaded book, had Calibre alter the title and put it back, I disconnected the voyage and looked in the library of my downloaded books. The books with the new titles were there initially, but within seconds had removed themselves and were nowhere to be found.

I had already done this 2-3 times, including a kindle reset after the delete, and before sideloading the newly titled (& deDRMed) book. It was only on this final time that I was fast enough to see why my books didn't show up anywhere. They DID appear, initially, but as soon as the kindle contacted the cloud (i think) and saw the title mismatch, they disappeared from the kindle.

I finally gave up on re-titling them, and downloaded them again from the cloud, with amazon's original title. Are we not able to customize the title, if the book comes from amazon?

My suggestion is to keep WiFi off. I've had enough trouble with Amazon's cloud. I was trying to create a collection and was told it was already in the cloud. So I had to give it a different name. But the collection I wanted never did show up on the Kindle. I don't get what's going on with the cloud and why Amazon feels the need to let it take control.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I found my Voyage deleting my calibre-customized-TITLE (series #xx original title). In fact, when I deleted the original downloaded book, had Calibre alter the title and put it back, I disconnected the voyage and looked in the library of my downloaded books. The books with the new titles were there initially, but within seconds had removed themselves and were nowhere to be found.

I had already done this 2-3 times, including a kindle reset after the delete, and before sideloading the newly titled (& deDRMed) book. It was only on this final time that I was fast enough to see why my books didn't show up anywhere. They DID appear, initially, but as soon as the kindle contacted the cloud (i think) and saw the title mismatch, they disappeared from the kindle.

I finally gave up on re-titling them, and downloaded them again from the cloud, with amazon's original title. Are we not able to customize the title, if the book comes from amazon?

That I haven't heard???

Are you sure the files are no longer present? I have heard some weird things about collections (which makes me glad I have my old device)...

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

That I haven't heard???

Are you sure the files are no longer present? I have heard some weird things about collections (which makes me glad I have my old device)...

I can't see them, nor even search for them, from the Kindle. I didn't actually look in the Kindle folder (from my mac) because I need the kindle itself to be able to see it, in order to read it.

Oh, I guess it WAS really there, because Calibre was able to delete the re-titled book, so that I could try again to fix it. But if the kindle won't show me the title, the book becomes essentially 'not there'. So after deleting it with Calibre, and re-downloading the altered-title .... and not seeing it on the Kindle itself (rinse and repeat 3 times), I finally was fast enough (in dismounting the kindle from my mac) to SEE the books in my collection, and then see them disappearing from the collection**. Calibre was still able to delete the re-titled book.

I finally let Calibre delete it for one last time, and then redownloaded from the cloud. And left the title alone, in its original format. Then the book stayed visible to the Kindle.

** I think the only reason I was able to catch this happening, is because I was playing with 6-8 books at a time. I had just bought the half of a book series that I didn't already own. When I caught the kindle "in the act", by then a few of them had already disappeared themselves, but there were still a few left that I could see. Before they too disappeared themselves.

[eschwartz]

Well, then, that sounds like a collections issue.

Even on my old KT with fw5.3.7, I need to be careful about changing the title on a book in a collection -- it turns the book into a ghost, and becomes impossible to find in Collections view.
I need to a) delete it from any collections beforehand, b) let the Kindle recognize the book was deleted, and then c) resend it. And if I slip up, I need to delete and recreate the collection (preferably with CM/LS hack).

I am not sure what oddities may or may not have been introduced in the Voyage firmware.