First Name, Last Name, Author, Author Sort

[webmanoffesto]

I'm new to Calibre and I love this program.

I'm still getting used to how it works.

Do most of you (i.e. is it more or less standard) to have the
"Author" field be FN, LN (e.g. John H. Smith)
and
"Author Sort" field be LN, FN (e.g. Smith, John H.)

I'd like to do it correctly from the beginning, so I don't have to go back and redo my work.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by webmanoffesto

Do most of you (i.e. is it more or less standard) to have the
"Author" field be FN, LN (e.g. John H. Smith)
and
"Author Sort" field be LN, FN (e.g. Smith, John H.)

Yes, what you describe is calibre's default and the way most of the users have their libraries setup.

[itimpi]

I am not sure that there is a standard - it is all down to personal preference.

The behaviour you describe is the calibre out-of-the-box setting so I suspect most people stick with it (I know I do) and seems to correspond to the approach used by the online metadata sources I use. There are tweaks available for those who want a different relationship between the author and author_sort fields.

[kiwidude]

Just to balance the recommendations - see how your brain reacts to a page like this:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/

This shows a list of sorted authors like calibre's default format mode of displaying as FN LN.

My brain completely freaks out and can't deal with it, I like to read left to right and not having the first character alphabetical is something it can't cope with when trying to look down a list to find an author when I know the list is sorted.

But others don't have a problem with it and want to see the names as they would be written on the spine of the book or would be read out loud, which is the default behaviour.

As calibre supports either option it is as others have said a personal choice - though life will be easier for you if you make that choice and set the various options for it before you start adding books to your library.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Just to balance the recommendations - see how your brain reacts to a page like this:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/

This shows a list of sorted authors like calibre's default format mode of displaying as FN LN.

My brain completely freaks out and can't deal with it, I like to read left to right and not having the first character alphabetical is something it can't cope with when trying to look down a list to find an author when I know the list is sorted.

But others don't have a problem with it and want to see the names as they would be written on the spine of the book or would be read out loud, which is the default behaviour.

As calibre supports either option it is as others have said a personal choice - though life will be easier for you if you make that choice and set the various options for it before you start adding books to your library.

My brain doesn't like that list either, but I do like to see first name first on the book data. I'm difficult like that. So I stick with the default formats, since they make more sense to me on the edit metadata page. For the library list I created a custom column to display author_sort and hid the author column to keep my brain happy.