i'm wondering how to create a field for "author" in admin when adding/editing book product . i know there is a dropdown list of already added authors, but they are hundreds. it would be convenient to have a field to type the name of the author yourself if you don't want to look it up in the dropdown list.

i know how to create a field, but obviously the hardest part is what to edit so that the actual content is passed to the SQL query ...