When entering author/contributor names into Kobo Writing Life, you are no longer limited to entering three authors. Now, you can enter up to 50 authors/contributors.
By default, the author name is pre-populated with the author name you used when signing up for Kobo Writing Life. But you can easily add another simply by clicking on the Add another author text to the right of the first author (or primary contributor) name.
A window allowing you to enter a second author name will appear (as seen below). When the second author name appears, “primary author” will appear in front of the author who will be listed first on Kobo’s catalog.
You can then enter the second contributor’s name. You’ll also see the Add another author option so that you can add additional authors.
As you add more authors, they will appear in that same order on the website.
In the example above (an anthology), the editor is listed first, the author of the book’s introduction is entered second and the contributing authors to the anthology are listed in alphabetical order. Removing an author name is as simple as clicking on the small X to the right of the author field.
Below is how the sample book looks on Kobo’s web site with all of the contributor names as entered.
The author name field is a clickable link that assists customers in their searches for more titles by the same author. For example, if a reader has enjoyed a story by a particular author, clicking on their name listed in that anthology’s metadata allows the customer to see all of their other titles.
Please note that it’s important to be 100% consistent in order for these searches to be more successful. (For example, entering “Joe A. Author” for one book and “Joe Author” for another makes the search less successful since the metadata doesn’t match 100%)
Kobo’s web catalog does not currently show the role of the contributor, so that value is not being recorded in Kobo Writing Life. This feature will allow for better metadata entry and better reader experience for multi-author books, anthologies and multi-author box sets.