[democrite]

I haven't been part of the beta, though I can understand Kris' decision. Given a larger set of ePubs than what you might have seen, I've seen authors listed as:

First Last
Last, First
First [particle like de, von, …, sometimes enclosed in parens, sometimes considered part of the last name, sometimes not] Last
First Last, First Last, …
Last First (for both European and non-European languages where intended)
Last First, Last First, …
Last, First;
Last, First; Last, First; …
Last
First Last, suffix (e.g., PhD, MS, etc.)
Last, First, suffix
…

and like other, sometimes more difficult, cases I've forgotten. I don't really see any reliable way to correctly parse them all, it's going to be more evident with some languages, and someone else is going to eventually report that as "flaw", and possibly people did with 2.x. Perhaps you have some suggestion of how it can be done, but I'm not so sure it can be and it does indeed seem the better alternative is to list as is unless some way can be found to get it perfect.