Is There a Better Way?

[Thasaidon]

I have books by authors who have put out books under more than one name(e.g. Henry Kuttner also wrote as Lewis Padgett). I also have stories that have been put out under more than one title.

I would like to find the best way to deal with these issues. For authors I have been putting an crossrefernce annotation in "Comments". For the story with two titles I have been creating a "dummy" entry for one title and cross referencing the two titles in "Comments".

I do not find either solution particularly satisfactory as I cannot search for one name used by an author and have Calibre bring up all the books by that author. Similarly I cannot search for one title and have both brought up.

I have searched the forums but found nothing especially helpful (unless I missed it all) and wondered how other people dealt with these issues.

[Dopedangel]

For author name you could add the real name as 2nd author so if you search for a particular author by his real name all the books he has written under other names would also show up.

[chaley]

One way to solve this problem is to add a custom column to contain the alternative author(s) names. This is type "Comma separated text, like tags", but with the checkbox "Contains names" checked.

Next, you create a "Grouped search term" (preferences -> Searching) that combines the author column and the new custom column. For example, and assuming the lookup key for your custom column is "#real_authors", you could create a group search term "all_authors" that contains "authors, #real_authors".

Once you have done both steps, then you can search for authors in either column by searching for all_authors:"Some Name". It will find "Some Name" in either authors or #real_authors.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by chaley

One way to solve this problem is to add a custom column to contain the alternative author(s) names. This is type "Comma separated text, like tags", but with the checkbox "Contains names" checked.

Next, you create a "Grouped search term" (preferences -> Searching) that combines the author column and the new custom column. For example, and assuming the lookup key for your custom column is "#real_authors", you could create a group search term "all_authors" that contains "authors, #real_authors".

Once you have done both steps, then you can search for authors in either column by searching for all_authors:"Some Name". It will find "Some Name" in either authors or #real_authors.

Thanks for that I will give it a try. I can probably do something similar with stories being put out under different titles.