This week’s question comes to us from Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews who asks—
Do you acknowledge publication days for books you have read with a blog or social media post?
I only acknowledge publication dates for ARCs. This is the only time that information seems important, since I don’t want folks going to look for a book that may not be out yet.
What am I missing? For those that include publication date on every review I’m curious why? I’d love to be educated in the comments.
The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the hop on February 15, 2013. Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end the following Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book-related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to your own blog
fifty-two 
If I’ve been inspired to read a book that came out a few years ago, I post the date so readers know it is not new. I like dates from other reviewers because, I don’t always have the time to read something that is not current and would add it to a someday list.
LikeLike
I usually post ARCs and so I include publication dates, so I also include pub dates with other books I review just out of habit. And so someone knows they can buy it now if it’s been out for a while.
LikeLike
I only include publication dates on my reviews if the book isn’t out when I post the review, much like you. Otherwise, I don’t really think about it.
LikeLike
I’m having trouble imagining why people would care about the exact publication date other than “is it out yet?”
I guess if you were reading something that had been very popular semi-recently I could see alluding to that in the post; that they’ve probably already been aware of this book but you’re only now reading/reviewing it. But that doesn’t require putting the actual publication date, and probably is better done in text “last year’s widely acclaimed” or “everyone was talking about this a couple years ago” as part of the review.
And there are a few books, especially non-fiction, where it might be important to your review to point out that they were published before some major relevant event. (A book on economic markets from before the housing crisis, one on insurgency from before the global war on terror, or one on pandemics from before COVID). But again, that’s not the exact publication date; that’s just “it predates X and here’s why that’s relevant and/or interesting”
LikeLiked by 1 person