et al

[AlexBell]

Good morning all

I'm preparing a science fiction anthology which has stories by nine different authors. The publisher wants me to use the first author's name followed by et al in the metadata. But I can't seem to make that work and get the author to sort by lastname, firstname - all I get is al, firstname lastname et.

Is there a way to use et al but still have the author's name sort properly? Or should I recommend to the publisher that she does what everyone else does - put her name as editor, like the publishers of all the other multi-author anthologies do?

[DaleDe]

In ePub you can have multiple authors listed but as you point out an editor is usually listed for anthologies. et al is pretty difficult to represent all of the authors. I would suggest listing all the authors or at least all the major ones by using multiple entries in the ePub.

[Doitsu]

Did you use the opf:file-as attribute in the .opf to specify the sort order?

E.g.

PHP Code:

<dc:creator opf:file-as="Smithee, Alan et al">Alan Smithee et al</dc:creator> 


BTW, I don't recall ever seeing at al in Scfi anthologies. AFAIK, at al is mostly used in scientific books and papers.

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you both

I certainly wouldn't use it by choice, but it's what the publisher wants.

I use this in the content.opf metadata:

<dc:creator opf:file-as="Allison, RJ et al" opf:role="aut">RJ Allison et al</dc:creator>

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I use this in the content.opf metadata:
<dc:creator opf:file-as="Allison, RJ et al" opf:role="aut">RJ Allison et al</dc:creator>

AFAIK, that's the correct encoding and works fine in Calibre. What kind of application or reader did you test your book with? (Theoretically, any OPF 2.0.1 compliant reader should support the opf:file-as attribute.)

[Jellby]

I'd say that what the publisher wants is wrong and short-sighted.

The metadata should have the complete author list, with editor, publisher, markup writer, etc. It's up to the reading/cataloging/library program to display the list with or without "et al.", with one, two or three author names, with the editor name, etc.

... and yes, I'm sure many readers simply ignore opf:file-as and tons of other things.

[mmat1]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

<dc:creator opf:file-as="Allison, RJ et al" opf:role="aut">RJ Allison et al</dc:creator>

I'm a bit puzzled. This part of the meta

opf:file-as="Allison, RJ et al"

probably is optional. Sigil doesn't create it.

If any other software (probably calibre) adds a wrong sort-option I would just correct it manually with Sigil (takes less than 1 Minute) or directly in the epub with 7zip / notepad (if you don't like Sigil).

Btw. Callibre has an option to correct this situation.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by mmat1

I'm a bit puzzled. This part of the meta

opf:file-as="Allison, RJ et al"

probably is optional. Sigil doesn't create it.

opf:file-as is indeed an optional attribute according to the OPF 2.01 standard, but since there are readers and apps that support it, it couldn't hurt to add it.

BTW, Sigil does create this attribute automatically, if you enter the name of the author in the form last, first.

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you all.

The publisher has now agreed to have the editor's name in the author metadata field, so the problem fixes itself.

Using 'edt' as the identifier rather than 'aut' doesn't work - the author is set to 'unknown.'

[Jellby]

It's sad that you have to fill wrong metadata, simply to get the desired behaviour in current software.