Alternate title search

[maconly34]

Some books cannot be found via manual search because the title is not spelled exactly the same way. Can this problem be resolved?
Base title searched for when clicking the manual magnifying glass:
La Brigade des cauchemars - Compilation 1st cycle - Volumes 1 to 5 Franck Thilliez
"Not found"

If I simplify the title (e.g. "la brigade des cauchemars"), the book is found under this title:
La.Brigade.Des.Cauchemars.01.A.05.Franck.Thilliez.Yomgui.Dumont.Drac.FR.2024.[MP3.128.kbps]-SPL26

Thank's !

[MartinMWWebb]

Having the same issue, seems like many searches I am able to find the audio book I want but the auto search cant grab it due to over sensitive searching.

Example 1: Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
The selected Audible edition included [Audible Studios] in its title.
Automatic search failed to find results.
Manually removing [Audible Studios] from the search query immediately returned results.

Example 2: Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection — Arthur Conan Doyle / Stephen Fry
Automatic search generated:
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection Stephen Fry - introductions
All five configured indexers returned zero results.
Manually removing - introductions produced:
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection Stephen Fry
This returned results from multiple indexers.

Example 3: Three Men in a Boat — Jerome K. Jerome (working example)
Automatic search generated:
Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome
Returned 16 results across five indexers.
Listenarr automatically selected a release and successfully submitted it to qBittorrent.

Suggested improvement

• When an automatic search returns no results, Listenarr could retry using progressively simplified queries, for example:
• Original title and author metadata.
• Title without edition/publisher annotations such as [Audible Studios], and author without contributor descriptions such as - introductions.
• Clean title and primary author.
• Title only, if necessary.
• Release matching and validation should still apply to prevent incorrect downloads.

The indexer and download-client integrations are functioning correctly in my setup. The main issue appears to be the search query construction rather than connectivity.

These examples were reproduced using the current ghcr.io/listenarrs/listenarr:canary Docker image on 27 October 2026 if this helps.