Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I noticed that there is an author page for K.A. Applegate, and another one for Katherine Alice Applegate. Both of them have fans. I know that if I merge them the books, reviews, and videos will be combined, as the librarian manual says, but will the fans? I just don't want to mess things up for a bunch of her fans.

Also, is there a site preference as to whether we keep K.A. Applegate (more commonly used) or Katherine Alice Applegate (full)?

Thanks!

Katherine Alice Applegate has profile data filled in whereas K.A. Applegate is mostly empty; if you're merging two author profiles and only one has profile data, always keep the one with data! If the other name is the preferred spelling, you can always edit the merged author profile later.

I'm not seeing any fans on K.A. Applegate's profile, but if there were, they would merge over onto Katherine Alice Applegate's.

In this case, it definitely looks like the preferred form is the author's full name; when in doubt, I usually judge by the number of shelved books under each form, and almost all of them are currently under the full name.

Yes, I go by profile data (if any) and number of listed books, too.