Pen names

[Quoth]

Amazing!

I decided just to pick a particular single name for authors, which might be one of several pen names or a real name, whichever is most common.
So
Mark Twain, not Samuel Clemens
Charles Dickens
Capt. W. E. Johns (though he never was one).
John Russell Fearn

One exception:
Elsie J. Oxenham [Elsie Jeanette Dunkerly]

But I can imagine wanting Pen Names & Real Name on various authors that I don't actually have titles of.

So I may revisit this.

[Bertrand]

Thanks a lot Chaley!

It works very well.

[Martin]

Thank you, that seems to be exactly what I was looking for.
Everything seems to be working fine.

I have one more question about the column symbol, how do I get it?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Martin

I have one more question about the column symbol, how do I get it?

Use "Column icons" (Preferences / Look & feel / Column icons).

You will probably need to find/download the icon you want to use. Download it from one of the many free icon web sites, then add it to calibre using the Add icon button. Best is a square PNG file 128 x 128 pixels. If the icon image is larger it will be resized to 128 x 128.

The screen capture shows what I did. I chose to put the icon on the author's column. Of course you can choose whichever column you want.

[JSWolf]

Pen names...

Parker
Pilot
Cross
Bic
Montblanc
Paper Mate
Sharpie
Pentel

[Martin]

Originally Posted by chaley

Use "Column icons" (Preferences / Look & feel / Column icons).

You will probably need to find/download the icon you want to use. Download it from one of the many free icon web sites, then add it to calibre using the Add icon button. Best is a square PNG file 128 x 128 pixels. If the icon image is larger it will be resized to 128 x 128.

The screen capture shows what I did. I chose to put the icon on the author's column. Of course you can choose whichever column you want.

Thank you, you are the greatest...

[Wiggo]

I use an updated method of capink‘s user categories (template) and a grouped search.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=344829

[Dsharma]

Ah, the elusive pen name quandary! It's a common issue with Calibre, but there are a couple of ways you can tackle this.

One approach could be to use the 'tags' field in Calibre to list the pen names. When you input an author's name in the 'authors' field, you can also put their pen names in the 'tags'. That way, when you search for the author's real name or any of their pen names, all of the books will show up.

Another approach could be to use a custom column for pen names. Go to Preferences -> Add your own columns, and create a new column for pen names. Then you can put the pen names in this field.

For the house name, you could use a similar approach, creating a custom column for it or using the 'tags' field.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Dsharma

Ah, the elusive pen name quandary! It's a common issue with Calibre, but there are a couple of ways you can tackle this.

My choice is to use the name on the (original release) COVER for {authors} since that is used for metadata lookups (I do normalize for Publisher Variations, choosing what Fantastic Fiction files it under)

Using the Additional Search setting I mentioned, can get you all together.
Use the grouped search name instead of Authors, in the Tag Browser. That grabs both

[jecilop]

I keep a simple method that has worked really well and didn't require an special columns. It allows quick access to books under both names.

Simply create an empty book entry as below....I'm "Quoting" to indicate the name entry for this post.

Author: "_Pen Name" & "Name 1" & "Name 2" & "Name 3"
Title: _Pen (maybe a blurb about genre per name)

Tags: personal choice as to whether I include my genre tags there for that author.....I don't do this consistently, but doesn't matter in my library management.

So now..

1. If I list Author Name 1, a listing will show as above in that list. I can easily click the Name 2 to see listings under that one and so forth... This really helps, especially with authors with many pseudonyms and minor name variations that metadata imports may commonly use...Dean Koontz is a good example of this.
2. It's easy to add another pen to that entry if discovered.
3. By putting the underscore "_" in front of Pen Name, it always shows at the top of my sorts by title or by author and jumps out at you.

NOTE: This method works well for many things including _FAVORITE Authors and just adding names to the entry. I have troubles with the user categories on this. So I went this direction and have loved it. Easy to click a name at any time while seeing listing for any one of them.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by jecilop

I keep a simple method that has worked really well and didn't require an special columns. It allows quick access to books under both names.
[snip]

This is a nice, elegant solution.

I suggest two "enhancements".

1. Use the author link feature to add a "Link to show [the pen name] book" to each author in a set of pen names. This adds a clickable link on the author(s) to make selecting the master "Real name" book trivial.
2. Add an "Action Chain" that searches for all books in the set of pen names.

Doing the first gets a display like this one.


Clicking the link gets you this, which should be very similar to what you see.


Using the Action Chains script on any of the pen name books gets all books written by any of the pen names.


Here is the action chain export:

[BetterRed]

@chaley - unsurprisingly I handle Pen-names via my Authors library.

I link the author's different pen names in my Books library to a common record in the Authors library (usually their real name) - e.g. J.K. Rowling and Peter Galbraith to Joanne Rowling.

And now that I've replaced the 'show-book' links I had in the Author Link field with 'book-details' links I only switch to the Authors library if I need to add an author, add info for an author (e.g. a link to an op-ed column), otherwise the Author book-details popup (including a search to concatenated pen-names) has all I need.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@chaley - unsurprisingly I handle Pen-names via my Authors library.

I link the author's different pen names in my Books library to a common record in the Authors library (usually their real name) - e.g. J.K. Rowling and Peter Galbraith to Joanne Rowling.

And now that I've replaced the 'show-book' links I had in the Author Link field with 'book-details' links I only switch to the Authors library if I need to add an author, add info for an author (e.g. a link to an op-ed column), otherwise the Author book-details popup (including a search to concatenated pen-names) has all I need.

BR

I was 99% sure this is what you do but I didn't want to speak for you. I also think you do the same thing for publisher imprints and possibly series.

You mention a "search to concatenated pen-names" in your authors entry. I assume this is text for a search for all the items (pen names) that you manually maintain, ignoring any multiple-library differences. I wondered if there was a way to eliminate this manual maintenance, and if this "way" could work for any column, not just authors.

To that end I modified the action chain script from a few posts up to work on a column/cell basis. When run, the script determines the column of the current selected cell (authors, publisher, series, custom columns, ???), finds all the values in that column with the same link as the items in the current cell, then generates a search for those values. It should generate the same search as you maintain in your authors entry but without the manual maintenance.

To use it, import the action into action chains and give the new action a keyboard shortcut. When you want to do the search, select the desired cell (mouse, keyboard) then activate the shortcut. It will generate and execute the search. If there is a problem then it puts the error text in the search bar.

NB: this action chain doesn't require using multiple libraries. The only requirement is that if items are related then their item link fields contain the same value. Probably the most useful values are calibre links to show a book or open a book details window, but it could be an external link. For example, it will work with @jecilop's scheme if the pen names link fields contain a link the the "_Pen" book for the real name.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by chaley

I was 99% sure this is what you do but I didn't want to speak for you. I also think you do the same thing for publisher imprints and possibly series.

<snip>

I only maintain entries in my Creators library for a fraction of the Authors, Translators, etc in my content libraries, and only a fraction of them have pseudonyms. I created most of the multi-author searches in late-2020, early-2021 when I switched over to the calibre:\\ URL scheme. Wouldn't have added more than a two or three since.

In the end I decided to leave my 'Publisher' notes in OneNote. Even if I had created a Publisher library I wouldn't have linked imprints and M&A subsidiaries to a single publisher - too volatile.

BR

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

I use an updated method of capink‘s user categories (template) and a grouped search.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=344829

Originally Posted by chaley

Although I don't use pen names, for fun I looked at how I would solve the problem for myself.

I started with @capink's idea to use a 3-level Aliases user category: Aliases.real_name.pen_names.

Spoiler:

I then wanted to add links to book details for:

• All books by the person with this pen name. By this I mean all books by the middle level of the Aliases category: real_name.
• All pen names for the author of this book. These links search for books by the displayed pen names.

I also wanted to add a column icon to the author column indicating that that an author for the book has pen names.

I added two composite columns: Real names and Pen names. The Real Names column is a "Column built from other columns, behaves like tags." The Pen names column is a "Column built from other columns, show as HTML."

This screen capture shows the result. The comma in the names in the Real names column looks a bit weird because commas cannot in in values in tags-like composite columns. I used a quill image for the column icon.
Attachment 202172

Clicking a "Real name" link will select all books by that author, including pen names. Clicking a "Pen name" link will select only books with that pen name as an author.

The pen names column is implemented using calibre search URLs.

Here are the column definitions and templates. The templates need a bit more work for performance.

Real names:
Attachment 202173

python:
def evaluate(book, context):
	from collections import defaultdict
	from calibre.utils.icu import sort_key

	alias_category = 'Aliases.'
	alias_len = len(alias_category)
	fake_comma = '⸴'

	db = context.db.new_api
	aliases = defaultdict(list)
	# Parse the user categories, getting the real names. Build an inverted dict
	# pen_name: list(real_names). Why a list? Because a pen name can be used by
	# more than one real author.
	for real_name,pen_names in {cat[alias_len:]:vals
			for cat,vals in db.pref('user_categories').items()
				if cat.startswith(alias_category)}.items():
		for pn in pen_names:
			aliases[pn[0]].append(real_name)

	# For each author (pen name) for this book, get the real author(s)
	ans = set()
	for aut in book.authors:
		if aut in aliases:
			for real_name in aliases[aut]:
				# Replace commas with a fake comma because commas are used 
				# by calibre to separate values
				ans.add(real_name.replace(',', fake_comma) )
	return ', '.join(sorted(ans, key=sort_key))

Pen names:
Attachment 202174

python:
def evaluate(book, context):
	from collections import defaultdict
	from calibre.utils.icu import sort_key

	alias_category = 'Aliases.'
	link_break = '<br/>'

	db = context.db.new_api

	# Build a set of other pen names for each author that is a pen name.
	# This loop only processes categories prefixed with alias_category
	all_pen_names = defaultdict(set)
	for pen_names in [[v[0] for v in vals]
			for cat,vals in db.pref('user_categories').items()
				if cat.startswith(alias_category)]:
		for pn in pen_names:
			all_pen_names[pn].update(pen_names)

	# Build the set of all pen names for all the authors of this book. Use a set
	# to remove duplicates.
	auts = set()
	for p in book.authors:
		if p in all_pen_names:
			auts.update(all_pen_names[p])

	# Now build the list of calibre search link URLs , one for each pen name.
	ans = list()
	for p in sorted(auts, key=sort_key): 
		# Replace any spaces with non-breaking spaces to prevent a name from
		# wrapping over two lines.
		ans.append(f'''<a href="calibre://search/_?eq='''
			f'''{('authors:"='+p + '"').encode().hex()}">'''
			f'''{p.replace(' ', '&nbsp;')}</a>''')

	# Combine all the URLS into a single string with the URLS separated by link_break.
	return link_break.join(ans)

EDIT 1:

• Templates: added comments, now sort using locale rules, small performance enhancements.
• It is best to hide the pen names column in the book list. It doesn't show anything useable and would be calculated when it isn't needed, for example during scrolling.
• Change 'alias_category' if you use something other than "Aliases" as the alias parent user category name.
• In 'Pen Names', change 'link_break' to ', ' (comma space) if you don't want each pen name on a separate line.

EDIT 2: added links to @capink's post describing the user category setup.

I just tried your method and it works very good.

Thank you again, chaley