MYSQL: Handling Multiple LEFT JOINS - mysql

Question

I have a query with one LEFT JOIN that works fine. When I add a second LEFT JOIN to a table with multiple records per field in the first table, however, I am getting the product of the results in the two tables ie books x publishers returned. How can I prevent this from happening?
SELECT a.*,b.*,p.*, group_concat(b.id as `bids`)
FROM authors `a`
LEFT JOIN books `b`
ON b.authorid = a.id
LEFT JOIN publishers `p`
on p.authorid = a.id
GROUP by a.id
EDIT:
Figured it out. The way to do this is to use subqueries as in this answer:
SELECT u.id
, u.account_balance
, g.grocery_visits
, f.fishmarket_visits
FROM users u
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT user_id, count(*) AS grocery_visits
FROM grocery
GROUP BY user_id
) g ON g.user_id = u.id
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT user_id, count(*) AS fishmarket_visits
FROM fishmarket
GROUP BY user_id
) f ON f.user_id = u.id
ORDER BY u.id;

Answer 1

If you do multiple LEFT Joins, your query will return a cartesian product of the results. To avoid this and get only one copy of fields you desire, do a subquery for each table you wish to join as below. Hope this helps someone in the future.
SELECT u.id
, u.account_balance
, g.grocery_visits
, f.fishmarket_visits
FROM users u
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT user_id, count(*) AS grocery_visits
FROM grocery
GROUP BY user_id
) g ON g.user_id = u.id
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT user_id, count(*) AS fishmarket_visits
FROM fishmarket
GROUP BY user_id
) f ON f.user_id = u.id
ORDER BY u.id;