I'm going to keep this open, but can't you just add an author record that is a combined name? That's a workaround, but I also think an industry standard for documenting authorship, e.g.:
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AIan+Jackson%2C+Steve+%26+Livingstone&s=relevancerank&text=Ian+Jackson%2C+Steve+%26+Livingstone&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1

Actually my example isn't good because Amazon is actually storing the authors in separate records, lol. But I am imagining a million book or music databases out there that use a single field.

A single field could work, but combining other data beyond the name is likely trickier (in my mind anyway). Will give it a go though ;)