Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

This is a box set where one of the books states it's by K.L. Docter. K.L. Docter is a pseudonym for the GR author Karen Docter. Karen Docter wants the box set to show on her profile.

It seems like I'm playing whack-a-mole. The GR book record had K.L. Docter. If I add Karen Docter as an author the line for K.L. Docter goes away. If I add K.L. Docter then the line for Karen Docter goes away.

This has been fixed in the mean time.

Marc, GR does this if it thinks the names are too similar (the criteria are a mystery - sometimes there are only 1 or 2 letters difference and there is no problem, and sometimes, as in this case, a whole first name and initials are considered too similar).

The trick is to add a temporary name first that you are sure is not an existing author (some librarians use f.e. temptemp or their own user name, I am partial to adding the name without any spaces) and then change that to the correct name.

This author has contacted me to merge these two pages. She would like the books listed under K.L. Docter moved to Karen Docter. Is this possible? I looked, but don't see a way. Or, what about adding her real name to her pseudonym books as another contributing author? She said her pages were merged for her a couple of years ago, but the pages have since been separated again. At the very least she said she would like the books by K.L. listed on her Karen Docter page.

We do not merge distinct pen-names, so all books published under K.L. Docter will keep that as the first listed author. (Note: This would also apply if later editions were published under a different name. All editions would keep K.L. Docter as the first author.)

Karen Docter can be added as a second author to each book. However, as noted above, you won't be able to just add them. The system will reject very similar author names, as it assumes they are in error. The workaround is described in the second post above, as well as with more details here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I'm a little confused in this case. It looking at the edits done in 2015 it looks like I made K.L. Docter the main author name and Karen Docter as the alternate. While that would seem backwards, at the time she had most of her work published as K.L. Docter

I thought I'd messaged or e-mailed with Karen Docter about which she'd prefer but don't see any messages or e-mails. I must have assumed she would prefer to be known as K.L. Docter.

It's not a question of author's preference; it's a question of what name each work was originally published under. That is the name that must be listed first for all editions of the work.

rivka wrote: "It's not a question of author's preference; it's a question of what name each work was originally published under. That is the name that must be listed first for all editions of the work."

I meant that the author gets to choose which name should be canonical or her main profile name. For example, if it's Karen Docter then books with that name on the cover list just her on GR. Her K.L. Docter books would have K.L. Docter as the primary author and Karen Docter as a secondary author to link the edition to her main author profile.

If the author would rather use K.L. Docter as her main profile then the K.L. Docter works would only be by K.L. Docter and the Karen Docter works would have both Karen Docter and K.L. Docter.

That's what I meant by that the author can choose what she wants.

There were two K.L. Docter only works and so I've added Karen Docter as an author to both of them so now all of her K.L. Docter books are visible on her Karen Docter profile.

Earlier today Melissa fixed up Killing Secrets to be by both K.L. Docter and Karen Docter. That's working and the work is visible on the Karen Docter author profile.

Should we fix up all of the edition records for Killing Secrets to link to both K.L. Docter and Karen Docter or is it ok to only link the top-ranked edition or even just a low-ranked edition? At present the shelving counts are 74, 3, 1, and zero meaning the odds are next to zero that any of the other records will ever bubble up to the top of the list. If someone is on one of the K.L. Docter only edition records that they can't immediately jump to the Karen Docter profile via the author list. However, the top of the K.L. Docter 'about' message has "K.L. Docter is a pseudonym of Karen Docter." That's visible in the right margin for all edition records and so someone can click there to jump to Karen Docter's profile.

The first author for all editions must be the first author listed on the first edition published.

Beyond that, the most common practice is to add additional names only to the editions where that name is actually on the cover and they only get added to other editions if the author specifically requests it - then we add it to them all. Many authors separate their profiles on purpose, for instance because they publish in different genres.

It's just not up to us as librarians to take it upon ourselves to combine author profiles nor to add alternate author names to books published under a specific name that have never been republished under the other.

ETA: Missed a half a sentence.