How do I list my ebooks under the same author listing as my published books?

Any book by a particular author will show up when people look for that auther. Who the publisher is doesn't matter. (It is common for an author to have been published by more than one publisher.) So, just put your name as the author for your digital book, and that's that.

Note that other authors with the same name will show up too if they search for you. But that's exactly as you would expect it to be. If you want a listing that shows all books by you (say "John Smith") as opposed to all books written by all John Smiths in the world, just make a web page with all your books and point people at that.

Michi.

All books submitted to the store under your account will show up and be grouped together when someone looks at any of your books and bothers to drill down on you by name and or searches on the name attached to that account.

Books submitted by another author will show up under that author's name/account. If that author wishes to do so, they might be able to include your name as a string in the keywords - thus if that matches the name on the account for your other books, all would show up in a search.

The best way to have your books all grouped together in the store is to have them all submitted using one account, of course.

rockinyp wrote:

Thanks for your help, guys! Unfortunately, it sounds like I'm getting conflicting responses. MichiHenning says that the author's list is basically a search query (although the author listing URL doesn't seem to contain a search qeuries in it -- it appears to be a direct link to an author ID) and KT says that author listings are specific to the account that submitted the ebook.

Hmmm… Suppose a customer types "Pratchett" into the search box in the book store. That'll of course bring up all books that have Terry Pratchett as the author, or in the title, or anywhere else in the parts of the metadata that are used for a search. When you try this, you find that mostly books of Terry Pratchett show up but, if you look through the search results, you'll find that they also include a book called "Cultural Palimpsets: Terry Pratchett's New Fantasy Heroes", by Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

The books that are shown can be from different publishers. For example, "I Shall wear Midnight" is published by RHCP, but "Snuff" is published by Transworld, and both show up in the same search for "Pratchett".

You can click on the "Author Page". Doing this will bring up books by Terry Pratchett, no matter what publisher published the book.

There is no concept of a unique "Author ID" in the store, as far as I can see. I don't see how there could be one because, when you submit a book to the store, the metadata contains the author's name, no more, no less. There is no unique ID that would allow the store to distinguish between two different authors called "John Smith".

So, it appears unavoidable that, if you, as an author, have a name that is not unique, books from authors with the same name will be shown as well when customers click on the author link.

Michi.

Call it what you like, uploads are associated with an account. Work out from there....don't be distracted by speculation on maybes and what ifs 🙂

K T wrote:

Call it what you like, uploads are associated with an account. Work out from there....don't be distracted by speculation on maybes and what ifs 🙂

So, if there are two authors with the same name, will or won't they show up in an author listing?

Michi.

Check your email

K T wrote:

Check your email

Please see this post.

Michi.

I downloaded samples of all six titles. Clicking on the Author Page links in the store groups them as follows:

- The First Clash Author Page points at The First Clash and La Scrittore

- Pershing Author Page points at nine additional titles, none of which are among the six returned by the search.

- Double Trouble Author Page points at Double Trouble and Serendipity

- La Scrittore Author Page points at The First Clash and La Scrittore

- The First Clash (Greek translation) Author Page points at The First Clash (Greek translation) and Pershing

- Serendipity Author Page points at Double Trouble and Serendipity

Reading up on the biographical information in the samples, and looking around on the web, there are certainly different Jim Laceys involved.

It turns out that The First Clash, The First Clash (Greek translation), and Pershing are written by the same person. (You can see this by looking at the "Also by Jim Lacey" section in The First Clash.)

La Scrittore is by a different Jim Lacey.

Double Trouble and Serendipity are by yet another Jim Lacey.

So, there are three authors involved, but the iBookstore groups them incorrectly and inconsistencly in the Author Pages:

- First Clash, First Clash (Greek translation), and Pershing should be grouped together but are not

- La Scrittore and First Clash are shown on the same author page but are actually by different people

I have no idea what all this means, other than that authors are not identified by an author ID, but by something else. The strange results from the Author Page links might well be just an artifact of how the database is organised and searched. At any rate, in the absense of a unique author ID that unambiguously identifies a person (rather than a name), confusion among books by different authors with the same name appears to be inevitable.

If you want to make sure that readers get to see a complete and accurate list of your books, I would create a web page with your bibliography and point them at that.

Michi.

However, I'm thinking about the person who likes one of my books in iTunes and wants to see what else I've published. I'm assuming they'd naturally click on my author link? Is that an accurate assumption or not really?

I'd say that's a reasonable expectation. I guess it's unavoidable that, if you have a name is the same as that of other authors, people will see other authors' books too. One thing that might help is to add a page to the front matter of your electronic books, saying: "Other books by John Smith" or some such. You could even make each title a link to the relevant page in the store. Unfortunately, this means updating each of your published titles every time you add a new one, with the concomitant risks.

A better approach might be to just have a link to your home page or some such in each book. That way, you can update the list of titles without having to update each published book. Be careful though not to run afoul of Apple's rules about linking to competitor sites or competing products.

Michi.

I think I'll go with that route unless my original publisher gets back to me with a solution, in which case I'll be sure to update this thread for others.

In the absence of a unique author ID (similar to the publisher ID inside an ISBN), it is impossible to distinguish between different authors with the same name. I think it is a certainty that there is no solution to the problem, given the information that Apple collect when a book is submitted.

Michi.