diff --git a/src/calibre/gui2/store/stores/smashwords_plugin.py b/src/calibre/gui2/store/stores/smashwords_plugin.py
index 2c69417612..983067ab51 100644
--- a/src/calibre/gui2/store/stores/smashwords_plugin.py
+++ b/src/calibre/gui2/store/stores/smashwords_plugin.py
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ class SmashwordsStore(BasicStoreConfig, StorePlugin):
                 
                 title = ''.join(data.xpath('//a[@class="bookTitle"]/text()'))
                 subnote = ''.join(data.xpath('//span[@class="subnote"]/text()'))
-                author = ''.join(data.xpath('//span[@class="subnote"]/a/text()'))
+                author = ''.join(data.xpath('//span[@class="subnote"]//a[1]//text()'))
                 if '$' in subnote:
                     price = subnote.partition('$')[2]
                     price = price.split(u'\xa0')[0]