Something that's just occurred to me: we could use the new author role field to handle pen names by putting the canonical author name first and the pen name second with "Pseudonym" (or "Pen name", if we'd rather, I suppose) as the role. That way the book record is clear and, once the problems with second author searching are cleared up, the book can be searchable either way....

Eg, Angel Of Darkness.

That would be really excellent, especially if we're going to continue using the LoC authorities list as our guide to author names.

That's very clever.

I vote for "Pseudonym" over "Pen name". (I personally prefer "nom de plume", but since that's not commonly used . . .)

Interesting idea. So would that mean you'd always use the author's real name as the primary author?

I believe that's what is being suggested. And it is one way around the aka issue.

OTOH, the search is currently having trouble with picking up secondary authors. It would be good for that to be fixed before we do this wholesale.

I think I fixed the search issue on 2nd authors for tonights release. Just re-save any book that isn't searchable to re-index it.

I would prefer to not use this hack. It's clever, but its misleading because it looks like there are two authors, when really there is just one.

I'll bump up the priority of adding author aliases - maybe a month out?

Makes sense. Thanks for the update, Otis!

Thanks Otis. Aliases are the best solution. A month, or even a little longer, would be great!

Oh well -- at least it was generally agreed to be clever. :) And hurrah for incoming aliases!

Very clever, Cait!

Cait, I was about to add my support for your idea until I saw that aliases might actually be possible fairly soon.

Hmmm... Anglo-American Cataloging Rules Revised 2nd Edition (1967) did away with the old form of using only the birth name of the author as the identifier. (so "Mark Twain" would appear in the catalog, not "Samuel Clemens - see 'Mark Twain'"). I'd hate to think that GR is supporting an old, very outdated format.

On the other hand, it is helpful to know that Benjamin Black is John Banville. The "alias" tag is definitely the best way to go.

We currently use this hack for writing the name of an author in Persian language and as Otis said "its misleading because it looks like there are two authors, when really there is just one."

So, we are very glad to hear that finally aliases are getting more priorities.

Lazygal, whatever tools we end up having to show author names, I'm definitely in favor of centering things around the author's writing name, not legal name! (Mark Twain over Samuel Clemens, C.S. Lewis over Clive Staples Lewis, etc.)

I'll agree with centering around the writing name. I found all my John Christopher books were suddenly under a new name. It's disconcerting & I have to look up the name of a book now to find the author's name. I've known him by his pen name forever.

For anyone who is at all well known, you have to go with the commonly known name rather than the true name. There are multiple Stephen Kings in the database, but it would be stupid to change the name of the popular fiction writer to "Stephen Edwin King" or "Stephen E. King" in order to avoid ambiguity, because no one knows him by his first name.

I agree with using the well-known pseudonym: George Eliot over Mary Ann Evans!

(Although it gets kinda iffy when it comes to Anne Rice because she's also well-known under the pen names Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure in the world of adult-oriented and S/M fiction.)

So is our plan to go with the LoC except when the LoC conflicts with what seems to be 'well-known' by a reasonable consensus?

Although looking at the authority records, it doesn't look like that's likely to happen very often; Mark Twain, Stephen King, George Eliot & C. S. Lewis are all in there under their commonly known names.

Which leads me to another question... is the use of the forthcoming alias/pseudonym field primarily to connect up authors who write under a number of different names (Anne Rice is a great example), or to connect up an author's 'real' name with their pen names, or both? If the field is named 'pseudonym' it's a little confusing to have a listing of Mark Twain with his pseudonym being Samuel Clemens -- maybe, like the author roles, there needs to be a drop-down to indicate if the identity being added is a 'real' name, a pen name, etc?

I'm probably over-complicating this, but such things occur to me.

I would think that the new feature would be more for the Anne Rice case, where the author writes some books under their own name, and others books under a pseudonym. Sherrilyn Kenyon would be another example.

If Mark Twain never wrote anything as Samuel Clemens, there would be no need for a separate Samuel Clemens profile, and I would think it would be sufficient to mention his real name under the biography section.

I like the idea of just saying "Also Known As" or "Also Writes As" for people like Anne Rice, John Banfield, Iain Banks, Carolyn Heilbrun, etc..

If the author does not write under another name (be it their real name, part of their real name or an entirely new name) there's no need to confuse matters - mlady_rebecca's suggestion that it go in the biography is enough to satisfy people, methinks.

Okay, my thinking is now happily simplified! I agree that the 'real' name can go in the biography if they didn't write under it; I've been trying to think of situations in which that wouldn't be satifactory & just can't come up with any. (Thankfully!)

Add my 2 cents worth here after having spent 6 hours changing all the W.E.B. Griffin books.

IMHO the name used to write the book should be shown as the "author". Then in a 2nd field, the legal name/birth name should be listed identifying it as such. Griffin is a good example in that he has 10 or so pen names but has also written under his birth name. Coplicating the issue, his birth name is William Edmund Butterworth III. He has published using that full name as well as W.E. Butterworth III, and William E. Butterworth III, not counting as Alex Baldwin, Jack Dugan, John E. Dugan etc.

If I am looking at say one of his Griffin books and see that his legal name is .....Butterworth, then I could search for Butterworth and find all of his books regardless of the pen name he used to write them.

I also think it would be good practice to enter all of the pen names in the profile.

Here's what I found when I went to clean up the Griffin books last night.

Most of his books showed up with the main author listed as his birth name William Edmund Butterworth III (Author account= 1305435). I left the author profile (even though it is the same as his Griffin one) because he did actually write some books as Butterworth. Then he showed up as author 1475909, 253679 and 1415338, there was a slight variation of the way W.E.B. Griffin was written. I moved all the books from the first 2 accounts to the 1415338 account. Some of the same books (same ISBN) were in all three accounts.

In addition, 6 books were originally written as Alex Baldwin (some of these were under the Butterworth account without the Baldwin name used anywhere in the record) I changed author to Baldwin and added Griffin as second author in that all titles were later issued under the Griffin name.

Not to go into too much more detail there were several other books written under different pen names i.e. Jack Dugan, listing Butterworth as the author and again the correct pen name no where in the record.

Lori

I had the impression we were largely waiting for GR to finish the author aliases feature.

Has this changed, or did I misunderstand?

That was my understanding as well, but librarians have made various interim attempts in the past couple years.

Hi all, I'm a new Librarian and have a pseudonym issue, in reading over the discussions it appears way back in Feb some though it was a couple of months away, and yet there is no solution to date and more and more authors identified needing a way to deal with this. GR can be a resource to authors, what with the widgets etc., but if the aka solution is not coming soon, then shouldn't the Liberians try to offer a recommendation for 'in the mean-time'?
Regards
Wanda, aka WK, aka Bachi, and aka BachiLou -Thank goodness I'm not an author! ;]

The problem is that any temporary solutions will mean a lot of work -- and then UNdoing a lot of work later. Also, Otis has shot down a few suggested temporary solutions. Let's keep our fingers crossed that AKA is coming soon!

rivka wrote: ... Let's keep our fingers cro..."

Got both my fingers and toes crossed!

Another author with a pseudonym issue: Margaret Wise Brown/Golden MacDonald. Maybe we could start a list (if there isn't one already somewhere?) so that when the fix is in place, we could immediately start working our way through them.

Luann, that's an excellent idea. Someone (not me) should start a list of known pseudonyms, whether they are actively separated on GoodReads or not.

Here are a couple to add to the list:
Samuel Youd
Jean Plaidy (Victoria Holt)

Ok, here's one - Iain Banks vs. Iain M. Banks. It's the same author, but he's clearly differentiating between his normal fiction and his science fiction. I just changed "The Crow Road" from Iain M. to just Iain... Having the additional field would help a lot!

Wikipedia has a nice list of author pen names that we can refer to when the fix is ready.

Edit:
Actually, looks like Wikipedia has two separate lists that might at some point be merged:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pen_names

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms#Pen_names

So what's the current policy? I've just fixed up a book by "K.E. Mills" which is a pseudonym used by "Karen Miller" (I had to remove the reference to the latter to combine two editions which were listed one under each name). Do I add "Karen Miller" as a co-author, role=pseudonym, or do I edit the entry for "K.E. Mills" or what?

None of the above. Otis has asked that we not use the roles ability to add in a pseudonym's real name. I would suggest editing K.E. Mills' bio to mention that it is a pseudonym for Karen Miller (with a link), and add the converse to Karen Miller's bio.

Then we wait for the long-awaited aka feature.

So here's my favorite today for pen names:
An Apprentice Grimorie

with the following 4 (count 'em) versions of the same author.
Virgil Fuqua
Virgil Lee Fuqua III
V.L. Fouquet
V. L. Fuqua

Gotta love it.

The cover image says "V.L. Fuqua" so unless someone else knows more, can we go with this?

Sounds like a plan.