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(Sir) Walter Scott
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Cait
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Feb 09, 2009 08:21AM

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This would be a good use of the librarian note: when the Sir gets removed, add a note stating that official GoodReads policy (I think it's official policy) is to not include titles in author's names, hopefully discouraging those who keep trying to add it back.


I guess I don't really understand the criteria for this. I looked up "Richard Bachman" and they all (well, most of them) list Richard Bachman AND Stephen King as the author, maybe because some of the covers have it that way? A.N. Roquelaure doesn't list Anne Rice. What about George Sand? If the cover said "Johnny Lovecraft" would GR still list the author name as Howard Phillips Lovecraft?
Billy wrote: "I looked up "Richard Bachman" and they all (well, most of them) list Richard Bachman AND Stephen King as the author"
They shouldn't. Except for those few cases where both are listed on the book.
They shouldn't. Except for those few cases where both are listed on the book.

However, there might be a problem with this since apparently some of the Richard Bachman books are later published with Stephen King on the cover...
Not quite sure what to do about that.
And Ubik, I agree with you on Lovecraft. He should be on here as H.P. Lovecraft. When people talk about him, that's what they use. The book I'm currently reading by him also says H.P. Lovecraft and I looked at a few other covers and they said H.P. as well.
So if there's no objections, I'll change it in the morning (unless someone beats me to it...).


As for the Stephen King/Bachman issue, it's a major complication, not helped out by the fact that some of the books are released in his real name and others are only released with Bachman. In theory, many (although clearly not all) of these issues will be fixed if the Also Known As.../Pseudonym function is ever successfully worked out.
There are many other fun cases. Like book series which have one author's name prominently on the cover but are actually written by someone else (e.g., the various Tom Clancy's XXXXX series, none of which are written by Tom Clancy or any other co-creator actually listed on the book) or books written under shared pseudonyms like many children's book series.

So what names should go on these books? (1) The name on the cover (which would then list the same book under different authors, depending on which version it happened to be). (2) The (two) true names only. (3) The original published name only. (4) All four names, two of which are fake. (5) The two real names and the original pseudonym, but not the intermediate pseudonym. (6) Other combinations?
Currently, we (er...I) have all editions listed by #5, but it's not clear there is a right way to do this. My personal preference would be #2, but there are a lot of arguments against it, not the least of which is that none of the versions ever published actually lists the true name of the second author, and only some list the true name of the first author.

If I'm holding a book in my hand the GR listing should match what it says on the book, at least as much as possible.
My feeling about the original question is that the "sir" is less an honorific and more part of a pen name at this point. Are there any books that don't say "sir" on them?