Discrepancy between author on amazon and within the book

[Alex]

Note: I felt bad about the length by the end of this post. You can skip right to the questions at the bottom. If you do need the context for an answer (or are curious), that is provided in unfortunate abundance!

Be forewarned: this one's a weird one!

So, the Kindle book I'm talking about is attributed to Thomas Brown both on GR and on the amazon listing (found here).

However, using the "look inside" feature, one can see that the book is attributed to Jay Edwards instead. I tried searching to determine what connection Thomas Brown might have had, but found nothing that couldn't be related back to the amazon entry.

In my search, I did come up with something else, however; a similarly titled Kindle book (which I initially thought was just another edition), also attributed to Thomas Brown. The difference with this one was that the "look inside" feature revealed the book to be attributed to a Jolin White, which the GR entry also reflects.

Amazon listing - here
GR listing - here

The two books are similar (the first paragraph shares some of the same sentences), while also diverging from that point onward...

And this is the point, dear reader, when I realised that there was so much more to this than just two books. After investigating the Jolin White books, I saw that the Dementia Training book completely fit their pattern. I then considered whether the same might be true of Jay Edwards (though that profile isn't disambiguated ETA: Done). It was.

When a book is geared toward a male audience, the author publishes it under Jay Edwards. When it is geared toward a female audience, they publish it under Jolin White.

Unfortunately, that author's name does not seem to be Thomas Brown, as these books were variously listed on Amazon under Jolin White, Sharon Taylor, Charles Rich and probably more, if one were to go through every book.

So, finally, here are my questions:

#1: If a listing on amazon has an author that doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the book, should the book be attributed to the author on the listing, the one in the book, or both? Does it matter if that book is a Kindle edition (and thus the name was presumably chosen)?

#2: If two authors can easily be inferred to be pseudonyms for the same person, and you do not know that person's name, should mention of their probable connection be made on their author profiles?

Thank you in advance for your time and attention!

[Sandra]

Wow, that's a really messy one Alex.

Interested to see what happens with this one as I'm sure some of the "ROMANCE ....." ones I've seen are the same, the author just changes the name and publishes the same book under various names.

[lethe]

1) If Thomas Brown isn't mentioned anywhere in the book that you can see, I don't think that name should be listed here. (There are enough Thomas Browns as it is: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ;-) ) Sometimes the listing on Amazon is just plain wrong.

2) I think a "See also ..." on the respective profiles is in order in cases like these (only possible if the profiles aren't claimed, of course).

[Alex]

Sandra: These niche authors are just determined to make our lives difficult! XD

Lethe: #1: I'm inclined to agree. Usually, I'm able to independently determine the correct author, but there simply wasn't anything unrelated to amazon to go off of. Plus, as a self-published Kindle edition, I thought the author would have chosen the name it was listed under, so that just complicated things.

And about the Thomas Browns: I know right!? I've been disambiguating the Thomas Brown profile and it's ridiculous. I think there are 11 books left on the default, and they're all by different authors (on top of the 24 already disambiguated!).

#2: I'll do that then. Thank you for your responses!