Talk:Cover date

Removed
I've just removed the following, which appears to be vandalism / a joke:
 * One of the exceptions to the rule was the now-defunct History Today magazine, which was actually dated three months behind.

Shame, though - the idea of a historical history magazine whose issues were always out of date is rather wonderful... - IMSoP (talk) 00:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Marvel Comics, 1989
In 1989, Marvel Comics changed its cover-dating system. Most Marvel Comics had 14 issues bearing a 1989 cover date. They each had two additional issues, dated Mid-November and Mid-December.

TRANSFORMERS (1984-1991 series) 48, January, 1989 49, February 50, March 51, April 52, May 53, June 54, July 55, August 56, September 57, October 58, November 59, Mid-November 60, December 61, Mid-December

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeff39212 (talk • contribs) 16:03, 8 April 2008


 * This is not a cover-dating issue; rather, this is a publication-frequency issue, so there's no need to cover this in the article. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s (this was not restricted to just 1989; it was common throughout the entire period of the late 1980s and early 1990s; some titles also had more than 14 issues, as many as 15 or 16, in one year), both Marvel and DC experimented with departing from a strictly monthly publication schedule, so that some months of the year they put out more than one issue per month. —Lowellian (reply) 07:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Belated comment but that's wrong. The bimonthlies were cover dated "Early Month" and "Late Month". The "Mid Month" was a strategy to cut the gap between publication and cover dates. Thans to the direct market dominating the industry the gap was now up to four months. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:04, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

False Publication Dates
In contrast to legal manuals, which may have statements at the front that they represent the law as it was up to a certain specified date, academic textbooks, especially those aimed at American colleges, may be issued with the following year's date on the title page: which may mislead those considering buying them the next year.

A more extreme case of misrepresentation is the Indian publishers who, when reprinting out-of-copyright books, even from the nineteenth century, cut out the original publication date from the title page and the end of the preface, and substitute what can only be the date of reprinting. Such a mislabelled book may still be of use, but the unwary reader is misled as to the recency of the scholarship.

Modern photographic reprints may be guilty of the same misrepresentation when it comes to advertising on-line: only the date of printing of the current edition is given, and not the original publication date. Print-on-demand publishers, whether they are reprinting old or new works, may do the same.

Among newspapers, I used to think that Le Monde had a surprisingly fast distribution network, as it seemed to appear on Edinburgh news-stands a day before Le Figaro, until I learned from Wikipedia that it was printed at mid-day in Paris with the following day's date on the masthead.

A different purpose was served by the fake newspaper, possibly the Evening News, that a television programme revealed some decades ago was being printed daily or weekly with identical content except for the date so that a single copy could be delivered to the Britsh Library. This was in some way protecting the rights of the owners of the title. NRPanikker (talk) 13:16, 30 September 2018 (UTC)