Honest question, is this a common use case for regular users? To get a book by publisher and date? I have no idea who published most of my books, let alone the date.

I don't think this is a common case for "regular users" but in my library of coding books, I find both very useful. For example, O'Reilly has a very different style/quality compared to Packt. And it's helpful to know when the book was published to know it's recency and whether it may be outdated.

Is that something you want to know after selecting a book, or for finding one?