Author management

[Elerinna]

Hello, sorry for my bad English but I wanted to know if there was a system to create an author record on which one could record a short biography and especially a feature that would allow to write if the author is a man or a woman. Thank you in advance.

[Sirtel]

You can create a custom column for this.

Preferences -> Add your own columns -> Add custom column

[Elerinna]

Yes, I use many customizable columns but when there are 2 authors (comics) it is no longer possible because the column would not be directly linked to an author.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Elerinna

Yes, I use many customizable columns but when there are 2 authors (comics) it is no longer possible because the column would not be directly linked to an author.

Actually it is.
Calibre is a Relational database underneath. There is an Authors Table entry for each name used IN THE LIBRARY. Calibre uses this 1>many (books) Which is why, when yo manage Authors in the Tag Browser, it affects all uses.

What you SEE is a 'flat file' view.
select a book with 2 + Authors in the normal Author Column
: Tap 'I' (Info pane shows) You can click on either author (note they are in blue), that takes you to a Wiki page (default)
Preferences: Look &Feel: Book details (side bar) allows you to change the action for when you click on Author.
FWIW there is an extra field in the Authors table, it is not easy to get at without writing code. That is really where per Author details should be linked. (enter once, available anyplace the author is used. the beauty of an RDB)

[theducks]

Actually, the solution is easy. One of the choices for the Look&Feel setting is: Custom URL

Make a HTML file with what you want, for each Author name with what you want to say (adding images to the structure gets a bit trickier, so plan ahead so you don't need to go back and redo all)

Joe Smith.html (uses: Joe Smith Mugshot.jpg , Joe Smith chart.jpg)
Clicking on Joe Smith will open that (local) web page

[BetterRed]

I make use of the Link column in the Manage Authors dialogue, over time I've populated it with different protocol links**

• I started with file:// links that referenced text files;
• After a while I converted to evernote:// links referencing sections in an Authors notebook.
• Due to changes in Evernote (it got clouded) I converted to onenote:// links,
• As soon as Kovid implemented calibre:// links I started converting the content of Onenote 'notes' into 'book' records in an Authors library. It was what I'd been yearning for all along, I wanted its extensible database (custom columns).

** - because I dislike browser user interfaces, html:// links were never a consideration for me.

BR

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I make use of the Link column in the Manage Authors dialogue
BR

Never knew about that option, just tried it and saw that it overrides the setting in Look and Feel, Book Details. I have "Search for the author on Goodreads", but the override should be useful, occasionally

[Elerinna]

Good morning and thank you for your answers.
I confess that I am not finding satisfactory solutions at this time. In fact, I was looking to be able to take stock of my 2022 readings by female or male authors.

[isarl]

Originally Posted by Elerinna

Good morning and thank you for your answers.
I confess that I am not finding satisfactory solutions at this time. In fact, I was looking to be able to take stock of my 2022 readings by female or male authors.

I don't understand the issue. I understand your goal but it's not clear where you are encountering difficulty.

Can you not simply run a search which matches all and only the books of interest, and then simply use the category browser to review the list of authors?

If your needs are more sophisticated and you're interested in generating reports, then perhaps you can better accomplish this by exporting your reading data into a spreadsheet which you can customize. You can create a table of authors with their genders, and another table of book titles and authors, and create a lookup on the author/gender table from the title/author table. While you're at it you could add other metadata to the table of authors too.

[theducks]

Andrew North what gender? Why does it matter if the story and writing is good?
Not once did I choose a book to read by Author Gender.

Besides, where are you getting the (gender) data.
For many years, I had zero clue about most of my fav authors. Some of their Bio's were as fake as their Pen Name.

[retiredbiker]

Originally Posted by theducks

For many years, I had zero clue about most of my fav authors. Some of their Bio's were as fake as their Pen Name.

Do you ever have that right! I've been making epubs from old pulp scifi and mystery magazines, and figuring out who many of the authors really are is an amazing challenge.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by retiredbiker

Do you ever have that right! I've been making epubs from old pulp scifi and mystery magazines, and figuring out who many of the authors really are is an amazing challenge.

Don't even try
To muddle things even more, some reprint under their main name.
If I have it in dead tree, that is what I put in the Authors box in Calibre.

[Elerinna]

The more I read, the more I realize that I enjoy knowing the lives of the authors I read, and knowing their gender. At the moment I am very interested in Toni Morrison and Jack Kerouac and their biography seems exciting to me
But actually as said above I can create a database and generate a link related to the author, or use the link that simply refers to Wikipedia.
It is especially at the gender level that I would have liked to find a solution because I wanted to know what my proportion of male author was compared to that of female author

[Quoth]

How do you always know? It's said a number of female name Romance authors are men, Maybe 1/3rd at Mills & Boon once.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

Don't even try
To muddle things even more, some reprint under their main name.

Which might not be real either!