Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
This topic is about
Trana Mae Simmons
Questions (not edit requests)
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Is this the same author?
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I think they are, however I wouldn't merge them.
I agree with Ellie, the author seems to be deliberately keeping the two names as separate identities, writing romance as Trana Mae Simmons and paranormal mysteries as T.M. Simmons. I put a hyperlink in both profiles.
That is what I thought. I know some author's use different pseudonyms when writing in different genres.
Okay I get that, But some of her books are listed for both names. Should that get fixed?
Generally, no. It probably is supposed to be like that. (That said, we can look through all the books and check.)Every edition of a book has to have the original author name it was published under, and that name has to come first. So if some of the books have changed from one pseudonym to the other, they will have both.
There's a number of ways this can happen.
If she originally only used one name, then decided to separate them, for instance, then some editions would only have the original name, and the rest would have both.
Or if the opposite happens: If an author had two names, then combined them, a lot of the books will have both names, but not all.
I moved a couple from the T.M. Simmons to the Trana Mae. Actually, here's an easy way to figure it out:
If the name on the cover is *not* on the book page too, there's probably (but not always!) something wrong. Those are definitely worth reporting here, because it probably needs fixing.
If they match, then it's almost always right. But if you're really not sure, keep reporting those, it doesn't take but a second for a librarian to check the page and see.
It might not be the first name there though, because of the above.
The major exception is if an author has gone from a shorter name, to a longer one.
For instance, if they were "Bob Bobson" and added an initial, "Bob B. Bobson", we'd just move the whole author profile to the longer version, so it'd show up on even the books that didn't have the B. on the cover.
But we only do that when the longer version includes all of the shorter version. There's an easy way to figure those out too: Search for the two versions, and you should get more or less the same results.
It all seems a bit complicated but it comes down to this: If you had that book, with that cover on it, in your hand, and you searched for what you see on the cover, would you find the right book page.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
If so, could you merge them together and then combine her books.
Thank you