Sort multiple authors in a single book alphabetically?

[a_librarian]

So, I have a couple of books with 2, 3 or more authors in my Calibre library, and I am trying to find a way to sort these.
I have my author column sorted by [LastName, FirstName], and I would like to be able to (automatically) sort multiple authors in a book by their last name.

For example:
Author column of book 1 has 4 authors: W., S. & L., K. & B., P. & T. W.
Author column of book 2 has 3 authors: S., L. & N., M. & B. P.

Is there a way - with a plugin or via regex or whatever - to have that changed to
Book 1: B.P. & L.K. & T.W. & W.S.
Books 2: B.P. & N.M. & S.L.
without me having to do that manually for every single book?

[kovidgoyal]

Not that I know of, you'd have to write such a plugin yourself. calibre itself preserves author order since it is sometimes important, for example, it indicates priority in academic publications.

[ownedbycats]

Here's an action chain that might do it. You'll need an extra step though:

1. Install Action Chains and import the file.

2. Pick a book to test it on and run it on that book.

3. Open the MDE and use the "set authors from author sort" (on a button to the right of the field).

I can't 100% guarantee you'll get expected results though. I'm also not sure if there's a way to bulk-set the authors from the sort.

[a_librarian]

Thank you for your fast answers! I'm afraid writing my own plugin is a bit beyond myself, but I'll try the action chain solution, that sounds very interesting!