[eschwartz]

1. yes, exactly. The metadata changes are written into the book as you export it. You could just send and overwrite the book, depending on the change and your save template. I use a custom column to write the book back to the original filename Amazon used.
2. The mobi formats, both mobi7 (.mobi) and mobi8 (.azw3) do not support {author} metadata. Wat they do is store the {author_sort} metadata, and use that for sorting, then switch it around the comma in order to render the name on-screen. So yes, there is only one way to display them. By the way, for this reason there is an option under Preferences ==> Conversion ==> Output Options under the MOBI and AZW3 tabs to "use author sort for author". If this is how you set them to LN, FN format, then good. If not, this is the most elegant way to do so.