Unsure how to proceed: moving books to a profile

[Dobby]

I've run into an issue I don't know how to handle. At first, it appeared to be a simple disambiguation — a Goodreads author requested books be moved from another author's profile. OP's profile is set up with a middle initial; the other profile has no middle initial.

However, the Middle Initial author's books are all published without the middle initial. I added the Middle Initial name to the book record as a secondary author, using "Writing As" in the Role field, thinking that would move the book to the correct profile.

That didn't work; the record appeared to save (no error message), but the Middle Initial author name did not appear. The book remains under the no-middle-initial profile.

The other (and perhaps larger) issue is that all this author's books are published without a middle initial. According to the logs, the author has changed the author name on each listing, adding the middle initial.

I'm unsure how to proceed. The system isn't allowing me to add Middle Initial author in a secondary position. It becomes a moot point if the author's profile is changed to be in compliance with policy. In the meantime...how do I move those books?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Authors who have a name requiring disambiguation may choose to use a middle initial, rather than additional spaces. If they published under John Smith, and wish to have all their books listed under John Q. Smith (rather than John-15space-Smith), that is fine. No need for written as, etc.

If you try to add a second author name which is too similar to an already listed author name on the same edition, the second name will silently fail. For future reference (you shouldn't need it in this case), the workaround is to add a fake temporary name (I'm partial to temptemp, but anything you are sure doesn't already have an existing author profile should work) to each book you want the second author on. Then merge the fake name with the desired name.

[Dobby]

Excellent information - I didn't know that about the exception to the cover-name rule.

Thank you so much, Rivka.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Dobby0390 wrote: "I didn't know that about the exception to the cover-name rule."

It is in the Manual, although it helps to know where to look for it: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2...