If you want the author's name to appear beneath the title for a featured product you can edit customer/main/products_t.tpl and add this code right below the product title
Code:
{if $products[product].extra_fields ne ''}
{foreach from=$products[product].extra_fields item=extra_field}
{if $extra_field.service_name eq "author"}
{if $extra_field.value ne ""}
<b>by: {$extra_field.value}</b><br />
{/if}
{/if}
{/foreach}
{/if}
This works just as well.