I have several audio books on my lists that are showing the narrator before the author, so whenever you list by author they are in the wrong place. Is this fixable?

Just go to the book listing and submit a data edit.  The data edit option is listed under the More Options tab where the RL/WL etc. buttons are. 

Terra - you can click on the description page  and click on the "more options" button and then "edit book data".

Sample of how it should be formatted

Terra, this is an on-going frustration to those of us on the Book Data Editing team.  The system just does it's own thing.  It usually isn't worth another audit to try to fix it.  For instance, a month or two ago, I edited an audio that had two narrators.  So the edit submitted was  Author Name, 1st Narrator (Narrator), 2nd Narrator (Narrator).   The listing turned up:  1st Narrator (Narrator), 2nd Narrator (Narrator), Author Name.  :^[

Meanwhile I was able to find some additional data for the listing, so decided to 'fix' the author field since I was doing another edit.  Now it is:
1st Narrator (Narrator), Author Name, 2nd Narrator (Narrator).   - LOL

As it just took us several days to finally get through an approval queue that reached over 600 edits (and new edits didn't stop coming), we really appreciate members only sending these 'fixes' (which may or may not stick) if you have other data to add.

We have notified the PBS Team of the problem, but it apparently is way too involved, time & manpower, to justify the work to fix it for the benefit gained. 

Cool, thank you both very much. It's not a BIG deal but annoying.......

OK Anna----I got all excited to do something new and you have to stomp on it :) LOL 

So I won't submit them. Maybe an easier fix would be to just list the Author and put the Narrator in the discription instead?

That has pro's and con's, also.  When you are doing a search, the author field shows - so it IS helpful to have the names in the author field. 

It doesn't affect a search by author name for the narrator to be listed first.  It's just that we are accustomed to listing the 'most important' first - :^]. 

If you have certain narrators that you really like and are used to finding them in the author field, that's probably how you would search - and miss any that are in the description only! 

Besides, unless you put a note on your edit specifically asking that the narrator be in the description only, our approvers are going to add them to the author field before giving your edit the OK.   :^]

I had no idea it was so complicated when I recommended the Data Edit.  I submit a lot of data edits I hope I'm not causing a back log.  I try to fix/add everything I can when I do one though.

Wow! Sounds like there is more involved than I thought. So for now there is no sense in submitting the edits to put the author first because it doesn't always stay that way. Is that right? Just making sure I followed it all. Thanks for all the info and help!

That's right -- there's a fiesty scrambler gnome in the author box that goes to work whenever we click "approve edit."   It's also the reason we no longer put a comma between a name and a title, like Karen Johnson MD.  Or Jack Jones Jr.  If we stick the comma in there, the gnome can swich the order, so we might end up with

MD, Jack Jones, Karen Johnson, Jr.

Imagine the confusion when that started happening!

If you have something else to edit in the listing, go ahead and try to get the authors in the right order.  Otherwise just shake your fist at it and mumble under your breath.  (Drives the gnome crazy.)

ETA: And Mary's idea is right -- the most helpful edits are the ones that try to fix everything, rather than just the author, or just the number of pages.  Otherwise the approver can spend time trying to find the missing info.  Approvers love complete edits.

And citations.  Mention where you got the data from.  Makes the job much easier if we include the source.  That way those nice folks do not have to spend as much time searching and double checking.