Author Sort - change automatically?

[StanByk]

Hi,
as has been discussed here the Sony ereaders don't seem to honour the author sort field. In calibre I have added authors with their first name first, eg.
author: Isaac Asimov
author_sort: Asimov, Isaac

Is there a way to automatically change author to be the same than author sort?
E.g. change Isaac Asimov to Asimov, Isaac?

I have quite a few books in my library and don't want to do it manually.

Thank you,
Robert

[tulsa]

I'm not sure about doing the whole shebang automatically, but you can bulk edit books if you want.

If your library is huge, just type in Asimov in the search bar.
Then select all the books you want to change the author. Right click and select "edit meta information" and then "edit meta information in bulk". under "Author(s)" type in what you want and Calibre will change the author for all those books.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by StanByk

Hi,
as has been discussed here the Sony ereaders don't seem to honour the author sort field. In calibre I have added authors with their first name first, eg.
author: Isaac Asimov
author_sort: Asimov, Isaac

Is there a way to automatically change author to be the same than author sort?
E.g. change Isaac Asimov to Asimov, Isaac?

I have quite a few books in my library and don't want to do it manually.

Your correct the Books by Author menu does do first name then last name for authors. There is another option you might want to consider. I use PRS+ on my 505 which allows me to browse the actual folders on the device. When I use the Browse Folders option and drill down to the authors they are indeed Last name first. See attached images.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by StanByk

Hi,
as has been discussed here the Sony ereaders don't seem to honour the author sort field. In calibre I have added authors with their first name first, eg.
author: Isaac Asimov
author_sort: Asimov, Isaac

Is there a way to automatically change author to be the same than author sort?
E.g. change Isaac Asimov to Asimov, Isaac?

No and Yes. The 'no' part is that I know of no easy way to bulk copy author_sort to author. There might be some tricks with the command line functions, and it can be done using SQL (being *very careful* not to break everything), but I found that in the end it was easier to do it by hand. I did it by hand for some 400 books by using the metadata editor in the GUI and copying author_sort to author (click, E, copy, paste, click OK, repeat. sigh). Tulda's suggestion would save time if you have many fewer authors than books, but be careful of books with multiple authors.

The 'yes' part is that once you have corrected author to be ln,fn, you need to tell Calibre how to compute the author_sort so that it doesn't end up backwards. First, set the 'tweak' that tells calibre how to copy author to author_sort. See this post for some instructions.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by StanByk

Hi,
as has been discussed here the Sony ereaders don't seem to honour the author sort field. In calibre I have added authors with their first name first, eg.
author: Isaac Asimov
author_sort: Asimov, Isaac

Is there a way to automatically change author to be the same than author sort?
E.g. change Isaac Asimov to Asimov, Isaac?

I have quite a few books in my library and don't want to do it manually.

Thank you,
Robert

It just occurred to me that Calibre will let you create your collections from the author_sort field if you change the device interface plugin setting from tags, series to just author_sort (see attached) then all of you collections would be based on the author_sort field. In my case all collections would be Last Name, first name - example - Asimov, Isaac.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

No and Yes. The 'no' part is that I know of no easy way to bulk copy author_sort to author. There might be some tricks with the command line functions, and it can be done using SQL (being *very careful* not to break everything), but I found that in the end it was easier to do it by hand. I did it by hand for some 400 books

One alternative to SQL and/or manual conversion would be to save-to-disk all books in the ln, fn format, then reimport them, with the "swap author firstname and lastname" option turned off and the "get metadata only from filename" option turned on. This should reverse the name. The cost would be the loss of other metadata.

[cwalger]

You can copy the author_sort field to author field easily using calibre's bulk edit.
1. Select books you want to change, click "edit metadata in bulk"
2. on the "search and replace" tab, select "regular expression" from the "search mode" dropdown
3. fill in:
search field = author_sort
search for = (.+)
replace with = \1
destination field = author
4. hit ok

[chaley]

Originally Posted by cwalger

You can copy the author_sort field to author field easily using calibre's bulk edit. [...]

There have been many improvements since last April. Easier than using S/R is using Manage Authors and pushing the "Copy all author sort values to author" button.

[cwalger]

That's true, but you can't do that for a selected group of ebooks, can you? I think you can only 'manage authors' for your entire library.

[TurtleTots]

Originally Posted by chaley

If you are happy with calibre's default 'firstname lastname' author ordering, don't read on.

If you want to use "Lastname, Firstname" for authors, then you probably also want to change how calibre copies the author names to the author_sort field. If you don't, then you must manually edit author_sort every time you import a new book or change an author's name to avoid sorting by author displaying the list in a very strange order.

You can control how the copy using a calibre 'tweak' that changes how author_sort is generated from author. In the file tweaks.py, change author_sort_copy_method to either copy or comma (see below for more detail). Tweaks.py is found in your settings directory, which for me on windows 7 is C:\Users\charles\AppData\Roaming\calibre.

From tweaks.py:

# The algorithm used to copy author to author_sort
# Possible values are:
#  invert: use "fn ln" -> "ln, fn" (the original algorithm)
#  copy  : copy author to author_sort without modification
#  comma : use 'copy' if there is a ',' in the name, otherwise use 'invert'
author_sort_copy_method = 'invert'

I use 'copy'.

If the current author_sort fields are not correct, then once you set the tweak you can reset all the author_sort fields in one swoop. First, verify that the author names are all as you want them. Then select the books you want to change, press E to get the bulk metadata editor, check the box "automatically set author sort", and push OK. The author_sort field for all the selected books will be recomputed from the author field according to the value of the tweak.

I like fn ln for authors, but would really like the author_sort field to be fn ln also....How do I do that?????

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by TurtleTots

I like fn ln for authors, but would really like the author_sort field to be fn ln also....How do I do that?????

Use 'copy' for the tweak value, and if needed, recompute the author_sort by selecting the books you want to change and do a Bulk Edit Metadata -> 'Automatically set author sort'

[TurtleTots]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

Use 'copy' for the tweak value, and if needed, recompute the author_sort by selecting the books you want to change and do a Bulk Edit Metadata -> 'Automatically set author sort'

I have done this multiple times!!!!! It does nothing I have reloaded all my books (5300+) twice. I started to edit metadata one by one....then tried the bulk edit after the tweak again, and it puts everything back the way it was I'm soooo frustrated

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by TurtleTots

I have done this multiple times!!!!! It does nothing I have reloaded all my books (5300+) twice. I started to edit metadata one by one....then tried the bulk edit after the tweak again, and it puts everything back the way it was I'm soooo frustrated

Reloading books is not needed. Once you set the tweak to copy you should be able to open the tag browser and right click on the authors field then select Manage Authors and recalculate the Author sort values. Read this section of the FAQ for a more complete explanation.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by TurtleTots

I have done this multiple times!!!!! It does nothing I have reloaded all my books (5300+) twice. I started to edit metadata one by one....then tried the bulk edit after the tweak again, and it puts everything back the way it was I'm soooo frustrated

Author_sort is calculated from Author and uses the tweaks to determine how to do the calculation (Library order or Strictly Alphabetical, Copy or Flip)

Author must be correct for Automatic (calculate) Set to work as you have configured. GIGO still applies here

[TurtleTots]

Ok, well I had my 'code guy' AKA Hubby, look to she what I was doing wrong.... I had used 'copy author to author_sort without modification' instead of 'copy'
Thanks for your help guys!!