diff --git a/Changelog.yaml b/Changelog.yaml
index 773de17092..cd917f9314 100644
--- a/Changelog.yaml
+++ b/Changelog.yaml
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 #   new recipes:
 #     - title:
 
-- version: 3.40.0
+- version: 3.40.1
   date: 2019-03-08
 
   new features:
@@ -75,6 +75,8 @@
 
     - title: "Update the Get Books and metadata Amazon.com plugins to handle changes to the markup on the Amazon results page"
 
+    - title: "Version 3.40.1 fixes a bug in 3.40 that could prevent calibre starting when using a custom date column"
+
   improved recipes:
     - Scientific American
     - Taipei Times
diff --git a/src/calibre/constants.py b/src/calibre/constants.py
index 04ebcd82a6..1317ea6873 100644
--- a/src/calibre/constants.py
+++ b/src/calibre/constants.py
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ from polyglot.builtins import map
 import sys, locale, codecs, os, importlib, collections
 
 __appname__   = u'calibre'
-numeric_version = (3, 40, 0)
+numeric_version = (3, 40, 1)
 __version__   = u'.'.join(map(unicode, numeric_version))
 __author__    = u"Kovid Goyal <kovid@kovidgoyal.net>"