Katherine Applegate vs K.A. Applegate

[Sophie]

I went through Katherine Applegate's books page the other day and combined a bunch of stuff. It only now occurs to me (after reading the Iain Banks/Iain M. Banks thread) that all of her Animorphs books were originally published under K.A. Applegate. Per Goodreads policy, should they all have K.A. as primary author?

I did a search in this group and it seems that this has been asked about before--and in fact the two authors have been merged more than once. I'm wondering if this is considered an exception to the usual policy of keeping pen names separate from each other, and if so, what makes it different from similar cases?

(I don't have a problem with them all being under Katherine, for the record. Just wondering why the exception.)

[Deon]

If the cover says K.A. Applegate, that is what should be on the book.
Which ever name the book was published under first should be primary. if republished under Katherine Applegate, then that name should be secondary (only to republished books)

(one way do this because that, because the names are similar, is add Katherine Applegate as secondary author, then add K.A.Applegate (no space), save, then edit again and add space. save.)

Unless GR staff has added a note to the profile. I would not consider something an exception.

the search is specific. if someone searches K.A. Applegate it is not going to bring up Katherine. (vice versa) that is why it is important to have the exact name that is on the cover or a more complete version of.

[Sophie]

I guess I'm just confused because the two authors have been merged by other librarians multiple times. The only thing I can think is that maybe Katherine is considered a "more complete version" of K.A.?

[Deon]

The manual is very clear that these shouldn't haven't been merged.

In some cases, a book may be originally published under a pen name, but then later reissued under the author's original name. When this happens, the author listed for any and all editions should be the author name the book was originally published under - so the reissued edition would need its primary author name changed to the originally published pen name, with the additional name added as secondary for all editions with it on the cover. Doing this will allow the various editions to be combined.
https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2...

[Sophie]

2009: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
April 2012: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
June 2012: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

It looks like in the two 2012 threads, Rivka was the one who did the merging, so I'd like to hear from Rivka herself on this.

(ETA: I don't actually know whether Rivka is female, so apologies for any misgendering.)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Rivka is indeed female.

I have no idea why an exception was made for this author, but it does appear to have been a staff decision several years back.

[Sophie]

The 2009 thread suggests that her main name used to be Katherine Alice Applegate, which would actually be a more complete version of K.A. Applegate. That might have been before she claimed her author profile.