Suppose, hypothetically, that a reputable journal publishes an extremely scathing review of a book of which they had received an advance copy. Meanwhile, the book's publisher changes the title of the book and makes it available on Amazon, where it appears with glowing endorsements. I’m wondering whether such renaming is sometimes used as a tactic by publishers to mitigate the effect of unfavorable reviews. Has anyone heard of publishers doing that sort of thing?
Depends on the nature of the review. If it is poorly written, poorly referenced or contrary to the bulk of surviving data (with an adequate explanation why) then it’s just as likely to be rejected again
All of these issues if adequately addressed (and there’s no reason that they can’t be) a publisher might be interested.
what I find most frustration is where new editions are launched with hardly any alteration (perhaps just a new preface) and a whole taught course has to be edited because page numbers no longer are the same.
It is a novel question. Bold and interesting move, but for 'specialists' it won't do (when you have a certain 'reputation' as an author, it tends to stick with you). For the general public, well amazon's algorithms perhaps will take care of everything. Silly fact is that the publishers reject books arguing that they cannot sell to wide 'specialized' audiences (so a bad review will be a red flag and close even the sale to small audiences), and wider audiences are rarely if ever taken in consideration nowadays.