The final word on Kindle & author sort?

[PaulyB]

Hey,

Forgive me for raising the question again, lurked for a while so I know this one pops up every now and then. However, I've read the numerous threads and still find myself lost, and I'm pretty technically proficient!

Simply put, I am want my ebooks to list in order as follows on my Kindle:

Brooker, Charlie
Ellis, Bret Easton
Levitt, Steven D. & Dubner, Stephen J.
Morgan, Richard
Poe, Edgar Allan
Toro, Guillermo Del & Hogan, Chuck
Wong, David


All attempts so far have ended in frustration! I'm hoping there are some nice, clean steps I can take to achieve this! I'm also interested to know that if any of the steps involve reconverting the files if that could risk messing up an already decent conversion?

Many thanks!

[susan_cassidy]

Click on Sort by Author? Of course, the titles show up on the left, and the authors on the right, and the author data in the books has to be set correctly. Use Calibre to check, if you need to.

[PaulyB]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Click on Sort by Author? Of course, the titles show up on the left, and the authors on the right, and the author data in the books has to be set correctly. Use Calibre to check, if you need to.

You mean 'use author sort for author'? I have that selected.

I've just test sent a couple of books (for the hundredth time!) and currently the names are formatted correctly but still alphabetising by the first name:

Wong, David
Morgan, Richard

In Calibre the author is:

Wong, David

and author sort field:

David, Wong,

[speakingtohe]

In calibre my authors are
David Wong

and author_sort are
Wong, David

There are lots of people do it differently of course.

I think the newest version of calibre will change author names in mobi files without reconverting if you use the edit metadata screen to change them.
Not sure if search and replace or manage authors will though.

Of course you may want them as they are in which case a plugboard might help?

Helen

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by PaulyB

In Calibre the author is:

Wong, David

and author sort field:

David, Wong,

Well, there's your problem. The author column is actually sorted by what is in the author_sort column, so you'll need to fix those values. There's a tweak controlling how the author_sort value is computed from the author entry, you'll want to set that to "copy".

[PaulyB]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Well, there's your problem. The author column is actually sorted by what is in the author_sort column, so you'll need to fix those values. There's a tweak controlling how the author_sort value is computed from the author entry, you'll want to set that to "copy".

Sorry, I don't follow, I really need a clear step by step, I've followed so many varied methods from different threads and I just can't seem to find a consistent method that allows me display the books as outlined in my original post.

So

- what are the setting I need checked?
- what should be in the author field and author sort field for David Wong, to show Wong, David on the Kindle, alphabetising by surname.
- same again for books with multiple authors / editors.

thanks :-)

[ElMiko]

I, too, would prefer the Kindle to display Lastname, Firstname. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do that. Like you, I tried copying the author_sort values to the author column.

For what it's worth, it did fix the problem of the Kindle randomly sorting by first name. You said you wanted the Kindle to sort by surname consistently; I've found that it should be doing that already under the "author_sort-as-author" set-up that you have now.

I think that the display issue is not on Calibre's end but on the Kindle's end: the Kindle will always convert to "David Wong", whether the input is "David Wong" or "Wong, David". It seems that Amazon -- like Apple products -- is convinced of the rightness of its own aesthetics, and doesn't give much at all in the way of user discretion.

[speakingtohe]

I have found with the 3 eraders and 2 tablets I have used that the best way is to put the real values in the fields.ie David Wong in author and Wong, david in Author_sort.

Less confusing in the long run and for me reflects reality.

My advice would be to take one book, enter the correct values, and send it to the Kindle.
To avoid confusion, you should send a book not already on the kindle or delete book from kindle before resending.

If the author is not right, delete the book, convert the book in calibre and resend.

If still not correct then deselect 'use author sort for author' , delete the book and try again

Seems like a bother, but it is only one book and should not take that much time. Then you should have the correct method sorted out.

BTW it is not too likely that calibre will mess up an already nicely formatted ebook if you convert again using the mobi file as your source. Never happened to me and I have reconverted thousands.

I would suggest that you try the kindle collection plugin and kindle plugboards once you have resolved the current issue.

Helen

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

I, too, would prefer the Kindle to display Lastname, Firstname. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do that. Like you, I tried copying the author_sort values to the author column.

For what it's worth, it did fix the problem of the Kindle randomly sorting by first name. You said you wanted the Kindle to sort by surname consistently; I've found that it should be doing that already under the "author_sort-as-author" set-up that you have now.

I think that the display issue is not on Calibre's end but on the Kindle's end: the Kindle will always convert to "David Wong", whether the input is "David Wong" or "Wong, David". It seems that Amazon -- like Apple products -- is convinced of the rightness of its own aesthetics, and doesn't give much at all in the way of user discretion.

if you set the author name in the calibre metadata as last,first and the author sort tweak to:

copy : copy author to author_sort without modification

i would think that would do what you want. i did not test this.

[speakingtohe]

the Kindle will always convert to "David Wong", whether the input is "David Wong" or "Wong, David". It seems that Amazon -- like Apple products -- is convinced of the rightness of its own aesthetics, and doesn't give much at all in the way of user discretion.

Too funny but the kindle is not that smart. The kindle will display the name as it is in the metadat embedded in the file.

To see the embedded metadata use the calibre viewer and click the info button.

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by alansplace

if you set the author name in the calibre metadata as last,first and the author sort tweak to:

copy : copy author to author_sort without modification

i would think that would do what you want. i did not test this.

Sorry if I'm being dense, but is that missing space after the comma intentional? If so, I imagine you might be right... My own work around would have been omitting the comma entirely, and then copying the author value "Wong David" to the author_sort field. Unfortunately, both of our solutions are probably not completely satisfactory. Speaking only for myself and not the OP, I want it to display "Bloe, Joe", not "Bloe,Joe" or "Bloe Joe".

Frankly, I was just posting to let the OP know that in my experience, there was no efficient way to achieve exactly what we wanted. For my part, I'd already resigned myself to this, having stopped using the main library browsing feature in the Kindle almost completely, opting instead to sort via Kindle Collections (PS - thanks thanks thanks to the author of that life-saving Calibre plugin).

Edit 1
@speakingtohe - Gah! replied too early. Let me check this out real quick!

Edit 2
@speakingtohe - I just checked the info three separate ways: 1) the Edit Metadata command, 2) selecting the book and pressing "I", and 3) opening the book in Calibre and pressing the "i" (metadata) icon at the bottom left of the icon panel. All three showed the author to be in the form of "Bloe, Joe", as I had hoped/expected. Perhaps I've missed something in your instructions. If so, let me know (obviously). But so far I'm sticking the Kindle-side auto-adjust theory.

I was actually only being slightly facetious about Kindle being know-it-alls. I don't imagine that it needs to be particularly smart to automatically check for commas in an author field and convert it accordingly.

Edit 3
@speakingtohe - All of the above notwithstanding, I learned something new as I didn't know (although I suspected) that there was a difference between the user-edited metadata and the embedded metadata. Consequently you seem the person to ask: is the only way to apply the user-edited metadata to the embedded metadata by reconverting each book (as you recommend in your 2nd post)? Or is there some way to do this without messing around with the fickle conversion Gods (ie, a command that says, "embed .opf data in ebook")?

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by ElMiko

Sorry if I'm being dense, but is that missing space after the comma intentional? If so, I imagine you might be right... My own work around would have been omitting the comma entirely, and then copying the author value "Wong David" to the author_sort field. Unfortunately, both of our solutions are probably not completely satisfactory. Speaking only for myself and not the OP, I want it to display "Bloe, Joe", not "Bloe,Joe" or "Bloe Joe".

Frankly, I was just posting to let the OP know that in my experience, there was no efficient way to achieve exactly what we wanted. For my part, I'd already resigned myself to this, having stopped using the main library browsing feature in the Kindle almost completely, opting instead to sort via Kindle Collections (PS - thanks thanks thanks to the author of that life-saving Calibre plugin).

@speakingtohe - Gah! replied too early. Let me check this out real quick!

just a way of referring to it, yes there's usually a space there as in 'Blow, Joe'

[kovidgoyal]

I haven't read through this thread, but one useful feature for this problem is in Preferences->Output options->MOBI Output. Set it to use author_sort as author, then when you send books to the Kindle, calibre will automatically set the author in the sent book to the value of the author sort field in calibre. This allows you to have correct author values in calibre and still sort by lastname, firstname on the Kindle.

[ElMiko]

Originally Posted by alansplace

just a way of referring to it, yes there's usually a space there as in 'Blow, Joe'

Hmmm. Well in that case, what you describe is exactly what the OP said he'd done in his second post (and I said I'd done in my first post), and which hadn't effected any change in how it's displayed on the Kindle. I thought that you were suggesting omitting the space to make the author seem like one word, conceivably circumventing the Kindle's automatic readjustment.


Edit 1
@kovid - I think the issue the OP was having had less to do with how it's sorted on the Kindle (although it's a related issue) and more to do with how it's displayed on the Kindle. I may have misunderstood, though. Nevertheless, thanks for the tip! I often forget to apply author_sort values to the author field before a conversion... this should have me covered!

[speakingtohe]

The quality check plugin will show all cases where author sort is incorrect, even those hard to spot lower/upper case ones aren't flagged by the pink box, and show up as an extra collection on my Sony.

I am probably wrong about the author metadata being changed without conversion as it doesn't change in version 8.17 without conversion

Helen