[answered] How to separate edition not shown in Separate Tool?

[Mesembryanthemum]

I'm trying to make a list of Georgette Heyer's short stories.

I was just about to add a new book record for Acting on Impulse - A Short Story when I discovered that one already exists. But it's marked as an edition of the collection Acting on Impulse: Contemporary Short Stories .

I tried to separate the short-story edition from the collection, but can't. The short story is shown in the collection's Editions view, but when I click "Separate editions", only the four "real" editions are shown in the Separate Tool .

Is there another way to remove the short story from the collection's list of editions?

[Melanie]

You can use the combine page to separate it that way.

For example, here is the link to the combine page that has been filtered by the work ID. You can click the separate button that's to the right of the edition you want to separate out.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin...

[Scott]

It's probably the primary work, so you'll need to select all the others and separate them instead.

[Mesembryanthemum]

Thanks for the info! I didn't realize that there's such a thing as a "primary work" and that the primary edition doesn't appear in the Editions view.

I tried Melanie's way, but GR said, "Sorry, you can't separate the most popular edition of a work."

So I did it Scott's way -- I separated the other editions -- but it was a bit scary, at least for a while.

First, GR hung when I clicked "Separate" (I got that "it took too long" error), but GR went ahead and enqueued the separation anyway. The task went MUCH more slowly than I expected. When I checked on the books after 15 minutes, three editions of the collection had completely disappeared, and the short story showed different titles (and covers) on the main view vs the Editions view. I started to panic, but I waited another 30 minutes, then checked the author profile > Combine editions. All the editions were still there, and the short story's Editions view was consistent again. Such relief!

Today I learned to wait at least 1 hour before panicking.

[Scott]

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "Today I learned to wait at least 1 hour before panicking. "

Always good advice in any situation.

[Renske]

Technically, the primary edition is on the separate page, just between the words 'separate tool' and the instruction. Not as easy to see the details as with the other editions, but hoovering over it to see the work ID in the link or opening it in a new tab work.