If the author was displayed after the Work in the dropdown menu showing possible matches in the database, then the need for disambiguation would be minimal.
Currently a hypothetical search for 'Salem’s Lot would return this type of display:
If the author was displayed after the Work it might look like this mockup:
I think this would be very useful indeed. Some Works won’t have an author relationship, but I guess we just don’t display anything if that’s the case.
I’ll have to see how easy it is to implement.
I created a ticket to track that feature: https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/BB-528
Well, it sure took a while, but this feature is now in beta testing:
Splendid, a very helpful feature!