Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Policies & Practices
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If author has written under several different names, should they be merged to one?
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The same of course applies when authors marry or change names otherways. Should they count as a new author?
Mod
In some cases, a book may be originally published under a pen name, but then later reissued under the author's original name. When this happens, the author listed for any and all editions should be the author name the book was originally published under - so the reissued edition would need its primary author name changed to the originally published pen name, with the additional name added as secondary for all editions with it on the cover. Doing this will allow the various editions to be combined.
Thanks Rivka! So, some books may seem to have several authors, but it is really just pen names, or maiden names? I will do this and add as a comment for authors. :)
Mod
Sometimes.
How does one go about connecting a book to its proper author?For example, this book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...) was written by this author (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...) who only actually wrote the first five books listed on his page plus the one I mentioned here.
What about a much more trivial case: If an author uses their full name for one book, but initializes their middle name when publishing another book? Which name should be used on the different books in order to not create two separate author pages?
the fuller version of the name should be used, unless the author has on purpose used to different names (abet not really different) to keep different genres of writing separate
What happens with Juno Dawson? She used to be James Dawson, and all previous books are published as James Dawson, but in future her books will be under her new name Juno Dawson.Currently Mind Your Head is listed as both, which appears pretty messy on the author pages.
Mind Your Head is correct though. Well, I'd probably move Juno Dawson ahead of the illustrator, but past the primary author the order really doesn't matter too much other than aesthetically.Whichever name they were first published under should be primary author on all editions. Later editions should have the name on the cover in secondary place. You can find this in the librarian manual in the section on pseudonyms and pen names.
She wrote under Nan Inger Östman, Nan Inger and Nan Östman. Should she be in goodreads as three different authors, or could they be merged, or linked somehow? I now wrote as a comment to the author that she is also known under other names.