Multiple authors not shown

[GeoffR]

I just noticed (on Kobo Glo) that only the name of the first author is being displayed for books that have multiple authors.

For example Higher Education by Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle: The Kobo only shows Charles Sheffield as author.

In Calibre the author name is listed as Charles Sheffield & Jerry Pournelle, so I tried changing "&" to "and" but Calibre immediately changed it back to "&".

I'm not sure if this is a Kobo problem or a Calibre one. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Edit: I'm using firmware 2.3.2, Calibre 0.9.14.

Edit: See post #7 for solution

[Lynx-lynx]

Geoff are you aware if Kepubs are handled the same way; that is one author only showing?

Also, does the book have 2 entries - one for Sheffield and one for Purnelle, or just one copy of it shows on the Glo under Sheffield?

Another question: what format have you got your books listed under - title or author?


PS I'll tell you up front that I don't have any answers for you, but these are questions that came to mind when reading your post - the answer to some of which may help to identify what's going on.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Geoff are you aware if Kepubs are handled the same way; that is one author only showing?

Also, does the book have 2 entries - one for Sheffield and one for Purnelle, or just one copy of it shows on the Glo under Sheffield?

Another question: what format have you got your books listed under - title or author?

I have one kepub with multiple authors (editors actually), and all are shown correctly in the format Author1, Author2 and Author3. I haven't found one that uses an ampersand instead of "and", which makes me wonder if the ampersand is the problem.

There is only one copy of the epubs, and it makes no difference whether they are listed by author or by title, they only show the first author.

However if I edit the metedata in Calibre so that the author names are separated by commas (Charles Sheffield, Jerry Pournelle) then the Glo shows both names in the book listings. So that is a work-around, but it would be nice to be able to use "&" or "and" to seperate the authors.

[tshering]

You could try

<dc:creator opf:role="aut">Charles Sheffield</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut">Jerry Pournelle</dc:creator>

or better

<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Sheffield, Charles">Charles Sheffield</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Pournelle, Jerry">Jerry Pournelle</dc:creator>

[davidfor]

I had a look at this a while ago, but I have just done a bit more to refresh my memory.

It looks like it is both calibre and Kobo. It might also be the ePub standard, and one or both of these are following the rules.

The author that is displayed on the Kobo devices is a simple string. Whatever is in the epub as the author will be display.

After sending a book with to authors to my Touch, the following is in the file:

<dc:creator opf:file-as="Niven, Larry &amp; Pournelle, Jerry" opf:role="aut">Larry Niven</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut">Jerry Pournelle</dc:creator>

The Touch reads the first one of these lines, and uses "Larry Niven" as the author.

If I change this to:

<dc:creator opf:file-as="Niven, Larry &amp; Pournelle, Jerry" opf:role="aut">Larry Niven &amp; Jerry Pournelle</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut">Jerry Pournelle</dc:creator>

The Touch uses "Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle" as the author. Based on the sorting it is using "Pournelle" as the surname.

I have a kepub by "Stephen Goldin, Mary Mason". That is what is in the database and the kepub has:

<dc:creator opf:role="aut">Stephen Goldin, Mary Mason</dc:creator>

The author sort puts this under "Goldin".

I had a play with the metadata plugboards in calibre and I can't convince it to write the full authors string into the appropriate place. My knowledge of the calibre template language isn't great, so I might have missed something.

[GeoffR]

Thanks tshering and davidfor, I am hoping to be able to do something from Calibre rather than edit each book's metadata directly.

I found how to stop Calibre splitting the authors when using the word "and" as a seperator (Preferences-->Tweaks-->SplittingMultipleAuthorsNames, I changed the regex to 'NeverMatch').

So now I can edit metadata and enter the author(s) as "Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle" and the author_sort as "Sheffield, Charles & Pournelle, Jerry". Kobo displays the names correctly and both the Kobo and Calibre sort by author correctly.

It would probably be much better to let Calibre split the names as it wants and then create a plugboard to transform the names when sent to the Kobo, but I haven't figured out how to do that either.

[GeoffR]

I asked in the Calibre forum and found a plugboard solution, many thanks chaley: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=202802

In Calibre go to Preferences-->Metadata plugboards and add a new plugboard:
Format: any format
Device: KOBOTOUCH
Source template: {authors:'re(re($, '(.*) & ', '\1 and '), ' & ', ', ')'}
Destination field: authors

Then just enter all authors as normal, seperated by ampersands in the author(s) field, and the Kobo will display them in the same way it does for kepubs:

i.e. In calibre enter: Walter Jon Williams & Steven R. Boyett & Conrad Williams
Kobo will display: Walter Jon Williams, Steven R. Boyett and Conrad Williams

[GeoffR]

[Deleted]

(I thought there was a change to the way multiple authors were handled in firmware 2.8.1, but on second thought I was mistaken.)