How to change author name when two authors have the same name

[Sarah]

This book is by Michael Collins, but not this Michael Collins. It is currently attributed to 91033.Michael_Collins, but it should be by 3384690.Michael_Collins. I tried changing the author by re-entering "Michael Collins" in the author field, assuming it would ask for disambiguation after I pressed enter, but it didn't. How do I specify the right author when his or her name is shared by multiple authors?

[Lobstergirl]

http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/20...

[Sarah]

Thanks for the response. I do not want to create a new author name, however. Both author names already exist on Goodreads, both with the same single space between the first and last names. How do I move books from one author to another if they have the same names on Goodreads? The help page you linked me to says "Also please note that any new books by the authors of that name will be entered into the main profile by default. They will have to be edited once they are added to Goodreads to shift them to the right profile." but it does not say how to do this if the two authors' names are identical. What am I missing? Can you please outline how you would fix this?

[Sarah]

Nevermind, I poked around some more and figured out what I am missing. In case any future editors have the same problem, I will post the missing information here.

If you have a book that is should be listed under another author with the same name, go to the page for the correct author. Go into the editing page, and at the top you will see that there are a certain number of spaces between the author's first and last name. Go back to your book editing page and re-enter the author name with the same number of spaces between the first and second names. This will move the book from the incorrect author to the correct one.

I hope this helps anyone who runs up against this problem in the future! :-)

[Banjomike]

If the author is a Goodreads author then you cannot go to their edit page. In that case you go to the page of one of their books and open the edit page of that.

[Kel]

Thanks @Sarah and @Banjomike, I found this thread helpful. I've just made several unnecessary edits trying to figure this out for myself! Got things right in the end, but apologies to the Goodreads checkers whop may have to trawl through my learning curve...

[Ritiel]

Sarah wrote: "Nevermind, I poked around some more and figured out what I am missing. In case any future editors have the same problem, I will post the missing information here.

If you have a book that is should..."

Thank you Sarah, your posting was the only place on Goodreads that I' ve found the proper way to do this.