diff --git a/Changelog.txt b/Changelog.txt
index cc06d44007..dab4004f48 100644
--- a/Changelog.txt
+++ b/Changelog.txt
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
 # - title by author
 # }}}
 
-{{{ 5.31.0 2021-10-29
+{{{ 5.31.1 2021-10-29
 
 :: new features
 
@@ -45,6 +45,9 @@
 
 - [1948560] Tag browser: Fix incorrect first letter partitioning when enabling numeric collation of items that start with a number
 
+- [1949167] 5.31.1 fixes a bug in an HTML serialization library calibre uses that broke a few things, such as the comments editor
+  tool in the metadata dialog
+
 }}}
 
 {{{ 5.30.0 2021-10-22
diff --git a/src/calibre/constants.py b/src/calibre/constants.py
index 1dcf42a7f2..da40183181 100644
--- a/src/calibre/constants.py
+++ b/src/calibre/constants.py
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ from polyglot.builtins import environ_item, hasenv
 import sys, locale, codecs, os, collections, collections.abc
 
 __appname__   = 'calibre'
-numeric_version = (5, 31, 0)
+numeric_version = (5, 31, 1)
 __version__   = '.'.join(map(str, numeric_version))
 git_version   = None
 __author__    = "Kovid Goyal <kovid@kovidgoyal.net>"