[davidfor]

Originally Posted by LivresInOz

Thanks all.
If I keep it simple by using commas between names, will a search for those names on the Kobo find them?

eg.
John Smith, Don Roberts, Mary McGee

With authors on the device like that a search for any part of any name will find them. In lists, sorting by author will put them under "Smith". In the Author list, there will be an entry for each author. You will see "John Smith", "Don Roberts" and "Mary McGee".

The take-home of my msg above was that using an "&" (in author section) is what made the book not show up.

(Well specifically: an '&' before the last name. Havent tried '&' between all names)

Yes and no. As @DNSB stated, the ampersand is used in calibre as the separator between authors. The author names are actually stored separately and the database know which to use and the order. So calibre does not store "John Smith, Don Roberts, Mary McGee", it stores "John Smith", "Don Roberts" and "Mary McGee" in the author table and a reference that "Book X" has those three authors. When the details are displayed, it reconstructs the list of authors. If "Mary McGee" wrote something by separately, you can search for all books in calibre by that author and see both.

The problem comes with how different applications see the author. As stated above, when calibre updates an epub with the authors, it does not do it in a way that Kobo will read it. What is done is correct and follows the specs. What Kobo does is also correct but, takes the simplest path with the specs. Which is why I recommend using the metadata plugboard I posted above. You could use one that put an ampersand between the author names. That would produce "John Smith & Don Roberts & Mary McGee", and it would work on the device. But, the device would treat that as single author, there would be a single entry in the authors list and when sorting by author, the book would be under "McGee". And searching for any part of that would find it.

What you do is up to you. You might prefer the authors displayed with the "&". But, with the commas and plugboard will give the best matching back to calibre when it is getting the list of books from the device.


And for the record, because of "Mary McGee", I have now have Janis Joplin's "Me and Booby McGee" going through my brain. Which is not actually a complaint. But, it might show my age.