Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

So, on Sun at 4:30 pm (central time, US) I was looking at the Kate Elliott. In the short list shown on the main view, a book by Melanie Rawn shows up ( The Golden Key). I selected that book and Kate Elliot's name is not on it. Upon further investigation, Elliot is listed as the third author on another edition of the book (which is properly combined and is correct). Why would the book that shows up on Elliot's page not be linked to the book with her as the author? Also, shouldn't all the editions of The Golden Key have all three authors listed once they are combined?

I don't mind going in and editing the other editions but I thought that it would be applied to all the books once combined.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Combining books does not compare author lists so changing the author list for one edition has no effect on any of the others. This is why if you change the author of a book which is linked to another, they no longer show up as combinable even though they are still linked. You cannot unlink a pair of books without first making the authors identical (if there's more than two combined books, a separate all might work, but it gets sort of complicated).

As for why it links to the edition without her as an author, I think it always links to the most popular edition. This can sometimes be awkward when you're trying to clean up author lists because you have to hunt for the proper edition to fix.

So I would have to go back and add the other names to all the other editions? Annoying. Looks like someone has already done it though.