iBooks is using "Sort Name" and not "Name". How do I fix this?

Well the idea of the sort fields in general is that you use them to get fine grained control over the sort order rather than tweaking the main field to an incorrect value. iTunes has a built in mechanism for auto-sorting values that omits a leading article (a, an, or the) such that The Beatles will normally sort automatically under B. Given that mechanism exists there is usually no need to place anything in the sort field at all, but if it is there then manual edits to the main field won't change the sort order.

You should be able to clear the current values using my script ClearSortName. Test the behaviour on a small group first to make sure it does what you want. Rather than having empty values I use the Sort Name field to actively group and order series so, for example, my Jo Nesbø books are kept together, and in the correct order, but retain their original titles. And I use sort artist/album/composer(author) to place the authors in the correct order by surname.

tt2

When you're viewing the scripts page right-click on the name of the script in the left hand column and click Download... or Save As... or whatever variant your browser offers.

If the downloaded script opens a text file then you may need to install/enable the Windows Scripting Host: Windows Script 5.7 for Windows XP

tt2

You may be glad to know that as of iOS 9.3, iBooks uses the authors FIRST name to "Sort by Name". That tells me it no longer uses the "Sort Name" field as there I have the authors entered as Last, First whereas the "Name" filed is First Last. I AM NOT HAPPY with this change!

😟

I've just looked at the iBooks app on Mac OS X and this has no controls for editing the metadata and, as you say, the authors are ordered by name. 😮

tt2

Is it by First name, or Last name in the Mac version of iBooks? I use Mac OS 10.8.5 so I don't have iBooks on my iMac.

Presumably it is the whole of the Name field since the app doesn't have separate fields for forenames and surnames. My books collection is organized in my main iTunes library in Windows where I have entered sort names for each of my authors. On my iPhone I've found that I can go to the bookshelf in grid mode and arrange things in any order that I want, then when I go to the list view they stay in the same order. There is a corresponding screen in iBooks that can be manually ordered, but I surprised to see the authors listed in the wrong order in a side column in the authors view.

tt2

OK, so if I go into iTunes and copy the Sort Name field contents into the the Name field, the authors would be sorted by last name, correct? I know I can MANUALLY rearrange the books in iBooks on my iPad, but it is cumbersome due to: 1) I have almost 1,000 books and 2) on the next sync, iOS 9.3 mess them up again. Thus if I do the above, I can hopefully cut down on the amount of manual arranging.

Copying sort artist into artist ought to work. I could tweak my KeywordsToArtist script to speed things up for you if you want. It doesn't currently support the sort fields as a data source.

tt2

Since I have several books by the same authors, I can probably get by with just doing a bulk edit for each author in iTunes.

No worries. Let's hope that sorts things out for you. At least it seems to be an option with Windows. I'm still getting over the shock of how restrictive the interface is in iBooks on OS X.

tt2

One of the reasons I'm staying with Mac OS 10.8.5 as long as I can.

Ah yes, variously running El Capitan and Windows 7 here.

tt2

Well, that did not work. I had 9 books who's author's last name was "White", 1 by James, and 8 by Steve. I changed the Name field to read White, (first name) and performed a sync. Initially all were removed from the iPad as I expected, but when the sync was finished only the book by Jame White appeared on the iPad but it DID appear down with the W first names between Walter and William. So it looks like iBooks is now dead for my use. I will probably migrate to eBookMobi. Of course I'll have to repurchase any titles I previously purchased in the iBooks Store as I can't convert them to normal ePubs.