How to fix author sort for Kindle

[speakingtohe]

@chaley
P. S. There are many more people on the calibre forum who deserve hero status as well. Perhaps Kovid and yourself are actually Super Heroes

[chaley]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

@chaley
P. S. There are many more people on the calibre forum who deserve hero status as well. Perhaps Kovid and yourself are actually Super Heroes

You are right, there are many people on this forum who provide exceptional service and deserve recognition. There discussions about how to use and not to use calibre are a prime source of inspiration for me.

[Jessehk]

Originally Posted by chaley

As promised, I have looked at the code, and thought about what role I am willing to play here.

I have decided not to attempt to make these changes. Reason: The problem has complexities that make it non-trivial to solve. I do not have a kindle and do not use the .mobi format, so I have no personal interest in a solution. I would rather use the time I allocate to this hobby to do things that I find useful.

That is perfectly understandable.

That being said, what should I do in the interim?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Jessehk

That being said, what should I do in the interim?

I see four reasonable possibilities, and one unreasonable one.

The four reasonable ones are:

1) Uncheck the 'use author sort' box. Books sent to the kindle will then have authors in correct kindle format (author;author), but (I think) sorted by first name(?).

2) Enter authors in calibre as 'LN, FN' instead of 'FN LN'. This, along with #1 above, should give you everything you want, assuming I understand both the problem and the kindle's behavior. If you choose this method, look at the tweaks and choose the appropriate method for computing author_sort. FWIW: I do this. I want my authors sorted by last name, and I want that last name to be trivially locatable in the author column.

3) Manually change the author_sort values for the books. My understanding from this thread is that if the box contains Blogs, Joe;Texts, Susie, then the kindle will do good things.

4) Do nothing, and live with books with multiple authors being strange.

The unreasonable one is:

5) Learn to program in python and make calibre behave the way you want it to.

[Jessehk]

Originally Posted by chaley

I see four reasonable possibilities, and one unreasonable one.

The four reasonable ones are:

1) Uncheck the 'use author sort' box. Books sent to the kindle will then have authors in correct kindle format (author;author), but (I think) sorted by first name(?).

2) Enter authors in calibre as 'LN, FN' instead of 'FN LN'. This, along with #1 above, should give you everything you want, assuming I understand both the problem and the kindle's behavior. If you choose this method, look at the tweaks and choose the appropriate method for computing author_sort. FWIW: I do this. I want my authors sorted by last name, and I want that last name to be trivially locatable in the author column.

3) Manually change the author_sort values for the books. My understanding from this thread is that if the box contains Blogs, Joe;Texts, Susie, then the kindle will do good things.

4) Do nothing, and live with books with multiple authors being strange.

The unreasonable one is:

5) Learn to program in python and make calibre behave the way you want it to.

This makes sense. I think I'll go with option number 2 (though I already know Python and option number 5 is not completely unreasonable ).

Would I have to change all the authors manually or could I automate it somehow (I have roughly 250 different authors)?

Once again, thanks for your continued assistance. It's much appreciated.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Jessehk

This makes sense. I think I'll go with option number 2 (though I already know Python and option number 5 is not completely unreasonable ).

Could I change your mind? New eyes and fingers are always welcome!

Would I have to change all the authors manually or could I automate it somehow (I have roughly 250 different authors)?

Yes, it is manual. That said, it isn't too hard to do.

The trick is that the author_sort is probably already what you want the author to be. If you open the 'manage authors' dialog (right-click on an author in the tags browser), you can copy/paste the author sort value to the author one by one. This will rename the author wherever that author appears. I did this once for around 200 authors, and it took around 10 minutes. *Be sure* to change the tweak first, or you will be fighting against yourself.

Edit: You might want to test #2 on a small number of books to be sure that the assumptions about both calibre and kindle behavior are right.

[Isherwood]

Option 3 has been tested and works properly. I had not realized that the Calibre metadata was being copied to mobi files when the file is sent to the device. I did not have this happen when I had some files in PRC format and had to manually convert them. I had since started converting 'mobi to mobi' to check the metadata in the mobi files on the PC.

For this test I just changed the author sort and re-sent the file. I then pulled the mobi file back from the device and saw that it had changed the author field to what I had set in calibre.

Now I just need to manually set the author sort on all books and re-send. Or just not worry about it. I had already gone through all my books and removed the multiple authors to that auto conversion from author to author_sort would do what I wanted.

FYI for a generated author_sort of "ln1, fn1 & ln2, fn2" change it to "ln1, fn1;ln2, fn2".

[megachirops]

I just want to thank everyone in this thread that looked into this. Your discoveries have allowed me to finally have everything I've been looking for in Calibre *and* Kindle. Previously I had been using the kludge of "Doe & John Smith, Jane" to get things to show up correctly on the Kindle and still sort by the primary author's last name. Now I can just change this to "Doe, Jane; Smith, John" and have everything the way I prefer *and* have the authors displayed *and* sorted correctly on the Kindle!

THANKS!

[chaley]

Apologies for awakening this thread, but some of you might be interested in the new 'plugboards' feature in the calibre beta (and soon, perhaps this week, in production). I hope that it resolves many of the issues discussed in this thread.

Plugboards permit you to specify new metadata to be written into a book when it is sent to a device or saved to disk. For example, you can construct titles that include series or what-have-you. You can alter the author_sort to conform to the kindle's rules. The changes affect only the copy of the book. The original in calibre's library is untouched.

Plugboards use the new template mechanism, which facilitates inserting text only if some other field has a value. Using templates, it is easy to generate values like '[Series-name 1] Title' if the book has a series, or simply 'Title' if the book does not. The same template mechanism lets you create GUI columns that contain the result of evaluating templates. You can create columns showing formats or isbn, in addition to showing the values you would use in a plugboard.

Read the first post of the beta thread for more information.

[Isherwood]

AWESOME! That will solve a lot of problems.

[Scott Nielsen]

I've really tried to get my head around this thread but not sure I get it.

Using the new plugboards in .21 I can set my title in Kindle to be Series No Title which is just fantastic.

I then tried to work out the author thing. In Calibre I have Author(s) as FN LN and Author Sort LN, FN.

If I then in my plugboard set author_sort as source template and destination to authors I see no change in how Kindle previously displayed things. If I change the destination field to author_sort, the Kindle sorts on the LN - which is an improvement - but the Kindle still displays it as FN LN.

Now, do I understand it correctly that the only way for me to have Kindle display and sort the Author as LN FN is to manually change my Author Sort to LN FN by removing the comma in my current Author Sort, i.e. LN, FN?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Scott Nielsen

I then tried to work out the author thing. In Calibre I have Author(s) as FN LN and Author Sort LN, FN.

My understanding from this thread is that the kindle is being your friend. It takes names of the form Y, X and displays them as X Y. I haven't heard of any way to turn this off.

If I then in my plugboard set author_sort as source template and destination to authors I see no change in how Kindle previously displayed things. If I change the destination field to author_sort, the Kindle sorts on the LN - which is an improvement - but the Kindle still displays it as FN LN.

Now, do I understand it correctly that the only way for me to have Kindle display and sort the Author as LN FN is to manually change my Author Sort to LN FN by removing the comma in my current Author Sort, i.e. LN, FN?

First thing to check: if you have checked the 'Use Author Sort' box in preferences -> conversion -> output -> mobi, then you must change author_sort and not author. Your post implies that this is checked. If it were up to me, I would uncheck this box and work with author, because that works better with multiple authors.

Assuming the box is unchecked, you set up a plugboard that copies author_sort to author. This will give you the behavior you see: visible FN LN, but sorted by LN. My guess is that you are correct, you must remove the comma before the kindle will stop being your buddy and flipping the names around.

The problem and promise: you should be able to use the 're' function in the plugboard template to replace the comma with something (blank, colon, ???). Problem: in release 0.7.21 the comma is special and can't be used. Promise: in the next release, that is fixed.

Thus, starting in the next release you would use the plugboard:

{author_sort:re(\,,:)}   --->    authors

The backslash in front of the first comma tells calibre to use the comma as a character, not as an argument separator. As such, every comma in author_sort will be changed to a colon. One hopes that the kindle will then display LN: FN.

[Scott Nielsen]

Thank you very much, Charles.

[Mixx]

Originally Posted by Scott Nielsen

I then tried to work out the author thing. In Calibre I have Author(s) as FN LN and Author Sort LN, FN.

If I then in my plugboard set author_sort as source template and destination to authors I see no change in how Kindle previously displayed things. If I change the destination field to author_sort, the Kindle sorts on the LN - which is an improvement - but the Kindle still displays it as FN LN.
?

Scott,

I'd be happy to have this piece done, but can not accomplish it.

Can you please confirm that

1) your options/Output/MObi/Box at "use author sort order" is checked
2) you have a plugboard that maps author_sort --> author_sort

and then you have a correct SORT but not the desired display on the Kindle. As I said, I'd be happy with that. I'll never be a Python expert, but would like to use Calibre.

BTW: on my system in the plugboard panel there is no Kindle 3 option (only Kindle, Kindle 2 and DX). I picked "any device" and any format.

Thanks a million,

Mixx

PS: I am still surprised that such an elementary need can be solved only by this much expertise. I admire everybody that can do it and wish it was much simpler (so that I could do it, too).

[Isherwood]

I had read that the Kindle reads "LN, FN" and displays as "FN LN" but requres both the comma and space. You could try removing the space with the regular expression conversion to see if Kindle would show "LN,FN". I like it showing "FN LN" but sorting by "LN, FN".