diff --git a/resources/jacket/template.xhtml b/resources/jacket/template.xhtml
index 9492965940..4751be2c67 100644
--- a/resources/jacket/template.xhtml
+++ b/resources/jacket/template.xhtml
@@ -20,6 +20,10 @@
             		<td class="cbj_author" colspan="2">{author}</td>
             	</tr>
                 <tr>
+					<!-- When formatting dates you can specify the type of formatting, for example
+						{pubdate.yyyy} while show only the publication year, and, {pubdate.dd MMM yyyy}
+						will show the day, month and year. For the full list of supported formatting codes
+						see the documentation of "Control how dates are displayed" in Preferences->Tweaks -->
                 	<td class="cbj_pubdata" colspan="2">{publisher} ({pubdate})</td>
                 </tr>
 
diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/transforms/jacket.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/transforms/jacket.py
index f20953f3c6..49957b443b 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/transforms/jacket.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/transforms/jacket.py
@@ -9,10 +9,11 @@ __docformat__ = 'restructuredtext en'
 import os
 import re
 import sys
+from contextlib import suppress
 from string import Formatter
 from xml.sax.saxutils import escape
 
-from calibre import guess_type, prepare_string_for_xml, strftime
+from calibre import guess_type, prepare_string_for_xml
 from calibre.constants import iswindows
 from calibre.ebooks.chardet import strip_encoding_declarations
 from calibre.ebooks.metadata import fmt_sidx, rating_to_stars
@@ -21,7 +22,8 @@ from calibre.ebooks.oeb.base import (
     XHTML, XHTML_NS, XPath, urldefrag, urlnormalize, xml2text
 )
 from calibre.library.comments import comments_to_html, markdown
-from calibre.utils.date import as_local_time, is_date_undefined
+from calibre.utils.config import tweaks
+from calibre.utils.date import as_local_time, format_date, is_date_undefined
 from calibre.utils.icu import sort_key
 from polyglot.builtins import map, unicode_type
 
@@ -196,6 +198,27 @@ class Series(unicode_type):
         return s
 
 
+class Timestamp:
+
+    def __init__(self, dt, render_template):
+        self.dt = as_local_time(dt)
+        self.is_date_undefined = dt is None or is_date_undefined(dt)
+        self.default_render = '' if self.is_date_undefined else escape(format_date(self.dt, render_template))
+
+    def __repr__(self):
+        return self.default_render
+    __str__ = __repr__
+
+    def __bool__(self):
+        return bool(self.default_render)
+
+    def __getattr__(self, template):
+        with suppress(Exception):
+            if not self.is_date_undefined:
+                return escape(format_date(self.dt, template))
+        return ''
+
+
 class Tags(unicode_type):
 
     def __new__(self, tags, output_profile):
@@ -281,14 +304,13 @@ def render_jacket(mi, output_profile,
         publisher = ''
     publisher = escape(publisher)
 
-    try:
-        if is_date_undefined(mi.pubdate):
-            pubdate = ''
-        else:
-            dt = as_local_time(mi.pubdate)
-            pubdate = strftime('%Y', dt.timetuple())
-    except:
-        pubdate = ''
+    pubdate = timestamp = None
+    with suppress(Exception):
+        if not is_date_undefined(mi.pubdate):
+            pubdate = mi.pubdate
+    with suppress(Exception):
+        if not is_date_undefined(mi.timestamp):
+            timestamp = mi.timestamp
 
     rating = get_rating(mi.rating, output_profile.ratings_char, output_profile.empty_ratings_char)
 
@@ -318,11 +340,12 @@ def render_jacket(mi, output_profile,
             css=css,
             title=title,
             author=author,
-            publisher=publisher,
-            pubdate_label=_('Published'), pubdate=pubdate,
+            publisher=publisher, publisher_label=_('Publisher'),
+            pubdate_label=_('Published'), pubdate=Timestamp(pubdate, tweaks['gui_pubdate_display_format']),
             series_label=ngettext('Series', 'Series', 1), series=series,
             rating_label=_('Rating'), rating=rating,
             tags_label=_('Tags'), tags=tags,
+            timestamp=Timestamp(timestamp, tweaks['gui_timestamp_display_format']), timestamp_label=_('Date'),
             comments=comments,
             footer='',
             display=display,
@@ -338,6 +361,8 @@ def render_jacket(mi, output_profile,
                     args[dkey] = Series(mi.get(key), mi.get(key + '_index'))
                 elif dt == 'rating':
                     args[dkey] = rating_to_stars(mi.get(key), m.get('display', {}).get('allow_half_stars', False))
+                elif dt == 'datetime':
+                    args[dkey] = Timestamp(mi.get(key), m.get('display', {}).get('date_format','dd MMM yyyy'))
                 elif dt == 'comments':
                     val = val or ''
                     ctype = m.get('display', {}).get('interpret_as') or 'html'
@@ -372,6 +397,8 @@ def render_jacket(mi, output_profile,
         has_data['tags'] = bool(tags)
         has_data['rating'] = bool(rating)
         has_data['pubdate'] = bool(pubdate)
+        has_data['timestamp'] = bool(timestamp)
+        has_data['publisher'] = bool(publisher)
         for k, v in has_data.items():
             setattr(display, k, 'initial' if v else 'none')
         display.title = 'initial'