Side load ePubs onto iPad Sort Artist problem

[phossler]

I was trying to side load ePubs into iBooks on my iPad and some of them had a "Sort Artist" entry that messed up the iPad library. (Capture.jpg) the George Smiley books

The book info on the iPad was not editable so as an experiment I cleared the "Author Sort" field metadata, saved the ePubs and exported using calibredb.

The 10 Bernard Sampson books by Len Deighton now all sort properly where as before 5 or 6 had a 'Sort Artist" of Deighton, Len and were with the rest of the D's

Is there something (a PI, editor, something) to make this a little easier? I can bulk edit the metadata if I have to, but would rather not since Calibre seems to use the Author Sort even I tell it to use the Author field (Calibre Sort.jpg)

BTW, I'm not a very good Apple user (or fan) but the iPad was a gift and it's been a struggle so far