Creating Custom Fields for Products based on Category

How do I create a custom field for a product based on it's category?

For example, if I want to sell books, I would want to replace "manufacturer" with "Author", "Editor" and "Publisher"

and if I want to sell music, I would want to replace manufacturer with fields like "artiste/band", "producer", "songwriter" and "label"

This is where Product Types are useful. Search on that in the forum and the FAQs.

There is a bit dated book product type module that does just this in the downloads section - written by moku

Thank You! I did search the forums for "product type" and found some useful information.

I did find the thread about the product type book and also "How do Product Type files work (Programmer View)" which, to me, explained the coding pretty well, but did not tell me what files to make the changes to nor where I could locate those files (which would have been helpful as I am new to this thing).

Also I found this link to be useful with ideas also, but it sounds a little complicated: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6888

I have not yet tried any thing like this yet though.

Your second link kinda outlines copying the files from one of the default optional product types and which files...

yea well that's the thing ... I read the thread on Moka's book and then I was like, ok, "where do I start?" "What file do I edit?" "Which directory do I locate the file(s) / save the file(s) to?" and then I saw that thread which seemed to answer some of those questions. The thing is, while I do have some experience designing websites, this is the first time I'm looking at setting up a shop, so all of this is new to me.

See if you can get the Moka's book module as this has this done already