Sigil UUID generator OMG what have I done?

[authorava]

I just realized I have been using the same UUID for MULTIPLE books because I created a template in Sigil that I use to start formatting every new release.

Also, I typically save the file for each individual book five times with a different file name after updating buy links and "other books by me" links (Amz, B&N, Google, ibooks, smashwords, kobo) and the UUID is the same for each version.

1. Do I need a different UUID for each version of the same book on different platforms?

2. Do I need to go back through all my books and republish the epubs with new UUIDs?

I'm feeling green at the very idea of it.
Ava Bradley

[KevinH]

Each epub should have a unique identifier which is typically just the uuid on epub2 and on epub3 the date information is appended to the uuid to create a unique identifier.

The uuid is also used when obfuscating and unobfuscating embedded fonts that have not been subsetted.

Many e-readers ignore this value and generate their own unique identifier by hashing title, author, and date along with the epub provided uuid.

I would not worry too much about your repeating the uuid for books already published until there was some other reason to udate the epub.. I would though in the future use unique uuids for each epub version for those e-readers that cache or sort epubs by that uuid.

[DiapDealer]

This reminds me that I still need to create that Sigil Template Plugin (an input plugin) that can automate a lot of these things. It would allow users to open their template epubs as brand new epubs with new uuids ready to be saved for the first time (and not overriding the original).

[authorava]

Thanks Kevin. I only have about three books using duplicates, so fixing them isn't going to be the nightmare I thought it might be. I'll make sure there is always a fresh one for each book moving forward.