In a sense, yes, it was on purpose....in the effect that the man who runs the Temple of Knowledge, David, The Keeper of Knowledge, is a legendary scribe whom is able to copy and in some cases enhance books. Since this was the great climax of The Servant's storyline, we wished to commemorate it with something that fit all elements of the theme...so David created facsimiles of the Tomes that were supposed to work as runebooks (As pointed out, they apparently do not allow you to drop runes inside...We're looking into that.) Since they are facsimiles, they are differently colored and different facings. If you are asking if we were trying to devalue a possession of yours? No, we were not. On Chesapeake, rewards, when we have them, go only where the story is enhanced or expanded by them. Your items are still just as rare as ever...They are different facings, and different colors. We did what we could to prevent your item from being confused with others. However, we went where the story took us with the rewards, as we always do.
I hope that this clears up any confusion.
As an addendum: There is work being done to try and look into both issues here...the nonfunctionality of the runebook mechanism, and the aforementioned identical name. Please give us some time and we may have a solution for both.