Changing author sort metadata on Kindle via Calibre

[Desertway]

I have always used Calibre to transfer books to my Kindle, and the author's names have always sorted by first name on the device and by last name in the Calibre library. I understand that this is because I didn't take the time to figure out how to change the metadata properly for device transfer. It didn't bother me because ALL my books were sorted that way.

But now I've started to enjoy some of the Kindle book features that are not available when books are "liberated". These books are directly downloaded from Amazon and, of course, they sort by author's last name.

Before I make a mess trying to make my library consistent, is it possible to plug my Kindle into my PC, view the books on the device in Calibre, bulk change the metadata there, and save the books back to my device without getting duplicate copies or having the books drop out of my collections? We're talking hundreds of side-loaded books.

Thanks!

[Desertway]

I tried, and it didn't work out. I ended up clearing my Kindle and sending the books again with the metadata corrected. Now everything is in order.

[eschwartz]

Make sure "use author sort for author" is checked in the MOBI/AZW3 output preferences.

Since calibre cannnot change the metadata of books already on the device, you will have to resend all the books, but you can just overwrite them with calibre (assuming the send-to-device filename template remains the same).

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Alternatively, you could do something involved using the command-line ebook-meta.exe tool to modify the metadata of the actual ebook files. But really, why bother -- resending is faster.

[Desertway]

Is checking the "use author sort for author" option in output preferences different from mapping "(author sort) to authors" in the 'send to device' metadata plugboard? Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[eschwartz]

It is basically the same thing, except output preferences is "more proper".

The only really wrong way to do it would be to modify the actual "author" field in calibre to contain the "author sort" information.

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Really, Amazon should just add an actual "author" field to the MOBI/AZW3 metadata spec and use that instead of deriving it from the "author sort" field. And stop calling the "author sort" field the "author" field.

[Desertway]

That helps. Thanks you!