how should I enter author's names

[wannabee]

You guys are always working with metadata so you seem to be the logical people to ask about metadata.

I have created a number of ebooks by Doctor Sandra Cabot who co-wrote some of them with Maragaret Jasinska. While reading some threads about searching for authors it occurred to me that I might be making a rod for my back or at least those who want to find her books.

Currently the author metadata has been entered for various books as

Doctor Sandra Cabot
Sandra Cabot MD
Sandra Cabot MD & Margaret Jasinska ND

Should I change it to

Sandra Cabot only
and add another author metadata for any co-authors?

[itimpi]

If you have an & in the author field, then this tells calibre that these are separate authors. Therefore entries 2 and 3 in your case will allow you to find the books using either author.

Your first example, however, illustrates an important point. As far as calibre is concerned it will treat two authors whose names are spelt differently as though they were two different people. This can apply to minor differences such as a different punctuation in their names. In your case it would consider "Doctor Sandra Cabot" and "Sandra Cabot MD" to be two different people which is probably not what you want.

That is the bad news. The good news is that Calibre makes it comparitively easy to correct such data discrepancies. If you use the Tag Browser and go to the Authors section then you can right-click any author and use the options that are given there to rename an author. Calibre will automatically apply that change to any books that reference that author.

Another point is that when you are editing a books metadata then Calibre provides aids to help you with keeping your data consistent. If you start typing an author name in then it will give you a list of currently matching possibilities so you can select from authors previously used. The other visual aid is that after entering an author the author-sort field is highlighted in red if the value there is different to what Calibre currently has for the author. This might be for a legitimate reason so it is only highlighted and not treated as an error.

I hope that helps - but if you were really asking a different question feel free to rephrase it.

[wannabee]

Thanks itimpi for that detailed reply. I think that answers my question. I really need to have the author metadata the same in all the files before I upload them to Amazon and other stores.
Thanks.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by wannabee

You guys are always working with metadata so you seem to be the logical people to ask about metadata.

I have created a number of ebooks by Doctor Sandra Cabot who co-wrote some of them with Maragaret Jasinska. While reading some threads about searching for authors it occurred to me that I might be making a rod for my back or at least those who want to find her books.

Currently the author metadata has been entered for various books as

Doctor Sandra Cabot
Sandra Cabot MD
Sandra Cabot MD & Margaret Jasinska ND

Should I change it to

Sandra Cabot only
and add another author metadata for any co-authors?

Itimpi outlined the issues,
The Tag editor is the place to correct the existing records.
2 things to do:
1) rename Doctor Sandra Cabot to:
2) Modify the Author Sort for MD, Sandra Cabot to Cabot MD, Sandra
(sorts properly in C's not M's )

[wannabee]

Originally Posted by theducks

Itimpi outlined the issues,
The Tag editor is the place to correct the existing records.
2 things to do:
1) rename Doctor Sandra Cabot to:
2) Modify the Author Sort for MD, Sandra Cabot to Cabot MD, Sandra
(sorts properly in C's not M's )

Thank, When editing metadata in Calibre does it modify the book file or a Calibre specidic local database and leave the file untouched?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by wannabee

Thank, When editing metadata in Calibre does it modify the book file or a Calibre specidic local database and leave the file untouched?

It edits the local database,
If you convert, it updates the 'Book Jacket' page. and the OPF file included in the package

[wannabee]

Thanks theducks.

So I can fix all the metadata in the package by changing it in Calibre and it will update the book package by converting it, say, epub to epub or epub to mobi. They're currently all epubs from indesign with the OPF edited.

Now here's a tricky one?
If the book is made as ePub and will be converted to mobi the ISBN is different for each format. How would you handle that? Is there a way of giving the ePub version one ISBN and the mobi another in the meta data?

I'm stumped on this.

EDIT: If you think this question has a more appropriate area please advise. Thanks.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by wannabee

If the book is made as ePub and will be converted to mobi the ISBN is different for each format. How would you handle that? Is there a way of giving the ePub version one ISBN and the mobi another in the meta data?

You can't have a different ISBN for two different "formats" of the same "book." The fact that there are two different ISBNs means that they are different books. Probably the best way to handle that is to treat the two formats as two different books and create two records. Calibre will let you create multiple records ("books") that have the same author/title.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by wannabee

Thanks theducks.

So I can fix all the metadata in the package by changing it in Calibre and it will update the book package by converting it, say, epub to epub or epub to mobi. They're currently all epubs from indesign with the OPF edited.

Now here's a tricky one?
If the book is made as ePub and will be converted to mobi the ISBN is different for each format. How would you handle that? Is there a way of giving the ePub version one ISBN and the mobi another in the meta data?

I'm stumped on this.

EDIT: If you think this question has a more appropriate area please advise. Thanks.

IMHO this area is OK, it only leans on the line with conversions

Starson's reply is your option
When the ISBN system was introduced. e-books were a dream (or nightmare )
1 ISBN per format eg HB,MMPB,Trade Paper
all 1's and 0's (bits look the same ), so the argument could be for either

[wannabee]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Probably the best way to handle that is to treat the two formats as two different books and create two records.

Why does it always take someone else to point out to me the bleeding obvious. Thank you

Originally Posted by theducks

IMHO this area is OK, it only leans on the line with conversions

Starson's reply is your option

Again - thanks

[ackleybj]

I started loading my books (2 years & many Calibre versions ago) as author name first. That is the way it came in from Amazon for the first books I loaded & I would change books that came in differently. Made it easier to find where the classics came in with different versions of an author, such as 'Frank Baum' vs 'L Frank Baum'.

Viewing the author in tag browser used to display authors correctly. Sometime several versions ago this changed & now G authors show 'Bernard, Max G' and 'Lloyd, Gary' instead of authors with the last name starting with G. Don't really understand why it is using the author field instead of the author sort field to determine the tags. How do I fix this so that I see the authors by last name without changing all the author names in my database?

Thanks for any help.

[kiwidude]

When you say "author name first", do you mean surname first as in LN, FN or do you mean FN LN? i.e. do you store as "Baum, Frank" as your displayed author, or "Frank Baum"?

If you store as LN, FN and you have not set the correct author sort tweak, chances are that your author sorts are a bit of a mess. There are plenty of posts about that, you need to set the right tweak to "Copy" and then use the Manage Authors dialog to cleanup your authors.

If you store as FN LN but are not happy with what you see in the tag browser, I note there is a tweak available to let you "Use author sort in tag browser" (look in Preferences->Tweaks). It does have a warning that comes with it though and I haven't used it myself.

As I store my authors and author sorts as LN, FN I don't have to modify the tweak and AFAIK my authors are displayed perfectly fine in the tag browser. So I can't give help you further if you are a FN LN person.

[ackleybj]

I see I wasn't clear, my mind gets ahead of my fingers. I store as LN, FN. The author sort field appears fine when I look at the metadata, but that is probably because when it comes in as FN LN, I just copy the author sort field & paste it into the author field. (Yes the author sort field always has a red background, I've just been ignoring that.) Guess I shouldn't be doing the copy & paste thing, instead fix the author sort tweak. The author sort field is a new thing for me, as I hadn't updated for many versions because I was pretty happy with it the way it was (except kept changing my tags from first letter capital to all lower case when a new book came in from Smashwords. So was happy that got fixed & was just tolerating the author thing by not using the tag browser to look at authors).

I see I have a lot of reading to do to get up to speed with all these features & recipes (I was so excited when I figured out how to do a mass update to change the name of a tag for all instances instead of doing manually for each book.) Thanks for being patient with me kiwidude. I actually came back tonight to find out about backing up the library, as doing a Windows Copy keeps failing after a few folders. Trying to find a method that doesn't take all night or crash in the middle.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by ackleybj

The author sort field is a new thing for me, as I hadn't updated for many versions because I was pretty happy with it the way it was [...].

Out of curiosity, what version did you update from? The author_sort field has been around for forever- at least since the 0.6.x versions, if I remember correctly.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by ackleybj

So was happy that got fixed & was just tolerating the author thing by not using the tag browser to look at authors).

I find that the Tag browser is by far the easiest way to fix author issues. If you find any entry there that does not look correct you can change either the author or author_sort field and tha change is applied to all linked books. I find that much easier than finding individual books and correcting them. However before embarking on that exercise I would ensure that the tweak for deriving author_sort from author is set correctly as it is quite likely you will want that change made in bulk.

I actually came back tonight to find out about backing up the library, as doing a Windows Copy keeps failing after a few folders. Trying to find a method that doesn't take all night or crash in the middle.

A windows copy should NEVER crash. You will probably need to get to the bottom of why that is happening if you want to get any sort of reliable backup of your Calibre library.

Having said that there are better tools than Windows copy for making backups. If you use something like RichCopy then it can be set to only copy changed files which should make things significantly faster as I would expect the vast majority of your calibre library rarely changes. Even if copying all files RichCopy is faster than Windows copy.