Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Sometimes the bot imports editions to an entirely phony author (at best poorly formatted). Example:

John (pseudonym of Mary Smith) Doe

What happens to the author profile if all of the books under this author are

1. Invalid OR
2. Deleted

Does the author profile remain, or does the script remove the now empty author?

If the author profile remains, is it better to merge into (for the example) John Doe with the followup to change the status of the books that move over?

As the books still exist when they're marked invalid they must have an author, so the author profile would still have to exist.

Generally I merge such profiles. Mainly because it helps me with keeping a better overview of what I'm working on.

Thanks, Arenda. That's what I thought would happen. Or not happen, as the case may be.

I want the authors to no longer appear on the similar authors page. I don't want to combine these titles, so I think I will mark them Invalid and then merge the authors. For the authors where they won't appear on the combine page, I'll be unlikely to find them again if I wait to mark Invalid *after* merging.