Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I am wondering why, when I try to add an author's penname as a secondary author for a book, it never stays and seems to disappear?

I found a penname that is just republishing books that were put out by an author under a different, but similar name. I started to put the original author name as the first name (the name the books were originally published under), with the newer penname as secondary for those works (and as mentioned in the Manual). But the secondary name never saves and disappears after I do my edit.

Books were originally written under Lynne Connolly and some are now being republished as L.M. Connolly. All of them, but 1 book (I think) are just re-publishes under that name.

For this book, I put the original author name as primary (Lynne Connolly) and added L.M. Connolly as secondary. But it doesn't stay there. It just disappears.

See: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
And: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Lynne Connolly profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
L.M. Connolly profile: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
All of them, except for "Passion in the Dark" are re-issues of Lynne Connolly books. But I'd have to double check.
You can see the titles and series for many of them are the same.

I'd like to have the author field correct, so the books can be merged, etc. Is the secondary penname showing not necessary? Is it still recognized by the system? Or does something need to be done to allow it to stay there when I save the edits?

Thanks! Since I kept trying to add the penname as secondary for those two and it didn't save, I decided to ask here before editing the rest of the books.

It's because the name is considered "too similar" to be a separate name to the main one. Anything starting with "L" and containing "Connolly" I think would be too similar.

What I do as a work-around is to add a temporary name (you can use a nonsense word, but I usually just stick it all together, in this case LMConnolly) and then when you're done, edit that name to the one you want, and it'll stick.

(By edit that name, I meant from the author profile.)

Okay, so you mean change the L.M. Connolly via the author profile to something else, then switch it back to L.M. Connolly? That'd fix the issue? Would I need to add this edited-profile-account name to all the books before I switch it back to L.M. Connolly? I've never done this before, so want to be sure!

Thanks :)

No, you change the secondary name on the book page(s) to f.e. LMConnolly, and then you go to the author page of LMConnolly and edit that to L.M. Connolly. If the system asks you whether to keep L.M. Connolly or keep LMConnolly, you choose the first.

In any case I consider this a (big?) problem. If you should have, for instance but it has already happened to me, a book authored by two brothers whose names start with the same letter, it is actually impossible to add both names. And sometimes, if you should use Sophie's "shortcut", as soon as you change the temporary name back to the correct one, the system automatically erases the second author.

lethe wrote: "No, you change the secondary name on the book page(s) to f.e. LMConnolly, and then you go to the author page of LMConnolly and edit that to L.M. Connolly. If the system asks you whether to keep L.M..."

Okay, I'm pretty sure I understand this. Thanks for explaining! I'll do that and hopefully I don't mess everything up. LOL.

Edit: Got them under the name LMConnolly at the moment. Once I'm done, I'll do the name change via the author profile...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

You can do it!! \o/

Okay, I think I did it!

See: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Well, now I have a clue what to do if that happens in the future. :-) I'm going to merge them into the editions and that should be that.

Thanks for the help.

Though I do think Paolo brings up a good point. In some cases there might not be an easy work-around.

Paolo wrote: "And sometimes, if you should use Sophie's "shortcut", as soon as you change the temporary name back to the correct one, the system automatically erases the second author."

If you are making the edit by merging or editing author profile pages, that should not be possible. If it happens to you again, please take screenshots and email them to support.

I wouldn't call it a shortcut. It is a workaround, and one whose use is unlikely to change any time soon.

Paolo wrote: "In any case I consider this a (big?) problem. If you should have, for instance but it has already happened to me, a book authored by two brothers whose names start with the same letter, it is actually impossible to add both names. And sometimes, if you should use Sophie's "shortcut", as soon as you change the temporary name back to the correct one, the system automatically erases the second author."

I don't know if I've ever seen automatic erasure of a name that wasn't exactly the same as the name already in the record, but it is really inconvenient to have to do this. I spent a while doing L.J. Smith and the names she was published under in other countries/languages, Lisa Jane Smith and Lisa J. Smith, and now it seems someone has merged all of them into L.J. Smith and my work was for nothing.

ETA: Rivka, can you clarify for me why these author names were merged?

Sophie, I see Lisa Jane Smith is still there: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Oh, good. For some reason I wasn't finding her in a search. Thanks :)

And here is Lisa J. Smith: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... :)

NEVER MIND :) idk why that didn't come up in a search for me. All I got was Lisa J Smith.

Search works in mysterious ways :)

Glad that all your work wasn't for nothing!

Me too! Sorry to have hijacked this thread with my complaining.

So it's fine to have both Lisa Jane Smith and L.J. Smith? If so, I'm going to delete my post in the "GR Authors for staff" https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Sorry

I know GR says the complete profile encompasses the incomplete profile, but in my experience, that doesn't work with initials. You cannot find the full-name author looking for the initials and vice versa.

In this case, it would work for Lisa Jane Smith and Lisa Smith (except that no doubt there are multiple Lisa Smiths), but it wouldn't work for Lisa Jane Smith and L.J. Smith. As far as I know.