Should I use options, attributes, or a modifier for book authors?

[Pentagonlibrary]

Hello,

I am new to the community and I'm in the process of setting up an online only bookstore. I would like customers to be able to search my books by author, but I don't know how to best assign the author's last name to the item. I would appreciate any guidance on whether to use the option, attribute, or modifier field to enter the author's name.

I tried entering "Author" for Option Name 1 and the actual author's name "Smith" for Option Value 1, but this resulted in an error (below) when uploading my excel file. I don't understand what to do since I have nothing in any of the "Variation Name" fields. There may be a better way to assign an author to an item, please help.

All item variations that include option sets must be unique. The variation in row 4 already exists in your library. Update the variation or remove it from the file.

Thank you for your help.

[Valentina]

Before diving in here with you, I wanted to point you to this thread where @isabelle provided a really thorough explanation of the ways in which modifiers are different from variations/options. 

However, it doesn't sound like modifiers or variations/options are the best way to include authors' names so that they are searchable, @Pentagonlibrary. I did a quick search online to see how other booksellers have set up their Square Online websites, and the most common setup is to include the authors' names in the item title:
 

I hope this helps! ✨

[Pentagonlibrary]

Wow Valentina,

Thank you for the response. This is very helpful. By the way, that's a great book you selected as an example. We have two copies of that at the house.

[Valentina]

I'm so glad this was helpful, @Pentagonlibrary ✨

Aw, this book definitely holds a special place in my heart - it was an integral part of my childhood! 🌕

[UnionRiverBook]

As far as I can tell there is no way to upload a custom field that can be used for Authors.  Using the "Custom field" has a hard limit of 255 options.  We've considered re-purposing the sku field to use for Author, but then we lose sku information. There are no viable workarounds that I can find here or in the various facebook groups, or even stack exchange.