Search by Author (kindle 3)

[ariellarraburu]

Hi people, anybody knows if is possible to search by Author in the kindle 3? I have many books (2500), and when I try to find a book of an author it take too many time, because the kindle make the search allways in all the content of the books, I can't find by a book title or author.

Thanks.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by ariellarraburu

Hi people, anybody knows if is possible to search by Author in the kindle 3? I have many books (2500), and when I try to find a book of an author it take too many time, because the kindle make the search allways in all the content of the books, I can't find by a book title or author.

Thanks.

At the very top where it says "Showing all 2500 Items", the far right corner shoud say "By" and then whatever option is chosen. the default is "Most Recent".
If you place your cursor up there and then use the right directional arrow, you will see the other options:

Title, Author & Collection

Choose "Author".

Then using your keyboard you can either 1: Put in the first letter of the Author you are looking for then scroll through the alphabetic list from there; or 2: type out the Authors name and be sent to the first author with a match.

[ProfCrash]

Might I suggest looking into developing your Collections. I would think developing your own storage system would be helpful with that many books.

[ariellarraburu]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

At the very top where it says "Showing all 2500 Items", the far right corner shoud say "By" and then whatever option is chosen. the default is "Most Recent".
If you place your cursor up there and then use the right directional arrow, you will see the other options:

Title, Author & Collection

Choose "Author".

Then using your keyboard you can either 1: Put in the first letter of the Author you are looking for then scroll through the alphabetic list from there; or 2: type out the Authors name and be sent to the first author with a match.

Great!, if I use the first character to search the author list its works inmediatly, but if I try to search by the complete name doesn't work, it take too many time and then freeze the kindle and I need to reset.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by ariellarraburu

Great!, if I use the first character to search the author list its works inmediatly, but if I try to search by the complete name doesn't work, it take too many time and then freeze the kindle and I need to reset.

I'm glad using the first letter worked for you.

[hrynkiw]

I'm a new Kindle 3 owner. I've been using Calibre to organize, convert and download my books to my reader and have been mostly hanging around the "By Collections" display.

Today I wanted to do a quick search for an author and flipped over to the "By Author" display and am horrified to discover that the listing there is by the author's FIRST name. (I don't even want to know why someone decided that would be useful.)

I'd like to set my By Author listing to sort by author surname. What are my options? Is this a Kindle setting issue, or a "that can be tweaked in Calibre" issue?

(Edited to add...) Further reading indicates that I might be able to resolve this with Calibre, and I'll take my research over there, but if you have any tips, hints or alternative suggestions to offer, I'd be grateful.

[Nyssa]

You can change it in Calibre.

Go to "Preferences", then "Tweaks".

You will see a long list of customizable options, look for "Author Sort Name Algorithm"

The instructions are in the top box, as follows:

The algorithm used to copy author to author_sort
Possible values are:
invert: use "fn ln" -> "ln, fn" (the default algorithm)
copy : copy author to author_sort without modification
comma : use 'copy' if there is a ',' in the name, otherwise use 'invert'
nocomma : "fn ln" -> "ln fn" (without the comma)
When this tweak is changed, the author_sort values stored with each author
must be recomputed by right-clicking on an author in the left-hand tags pane,
selecting 'manage authors', and pressing 'Recalculate all author sort values'.

If ALL of your authors are listed by first name then you want to change your default to either "Invert" or "Comma" (my favorite).

I would suggest that you look around at all of the applicable tweak options, there are some really cool things in there.

Be sure to restart Calibre after changing any tweaks.

[Robot Monkey]

Originally Posted by hrynkiw

Today I wanted to do a quick search for an author and flipped over to the "By Author" display and am horrified to discover that the listing there is by the author's FIRST name. (I don't even want to know why someone decided that would be useful.)

I'd like to set my By Author listing to sort by author surname. What are my options? Is this a Kindle setting issue, or a "that can be tweaked in Calibre" issue?

If you only have a few books (or don't mind a large batch convert and then transfer) you can address this with a conversion:

Click Preferences --> Output Options (under "Conversion") --> MOBI Output. Put a check in the box next to next "Use author sort for author".

Then transfer to your Kindle.

[hrynkiw]

Thanks Nyssa and RobotMonkey!

I think I'll be trying Nyssa's solution first (as I have over a thousand books in my library and don't relish the thought of re-converting and re-loading them).