Introductions/Afterwords Question

[Drace]

Just a quick question regarding authors who write introductions and afterwords.

In a big cleanup project thread I have going in the Looking for a Project folder, I noted that many editions of the book in question need to have the people who wrote the Introduction and Afterword added to the authors field, with respective Introduction and Afterword roles. The librarian helping out with the cleanup thread said that adding introduction/afterword authors "...is rarely done on Goodreads books, especially if their names do not appear on the cover." I've seen enough books (usually anthologies or new reprints of literary classics) with Introduction/Afterword authors listed that I thought I should confirm whether or not this is accurate. So, to the other librarians: should Introduction/Afterword authors be added to the book entries, or should they be left off?

As a note, I think I should mention that the introduction/afterword authors are not listed on the publisher website or Amazon pages. I feel like that's the biggest piece of evidence in the "they shouldn't be added" camp, so it should definitely be brought up for full clarification.

[gem]

Chiming in as the librarian who helped with cleanup.

I originally read through the Librarian Manual: Author names and profiles page for guidance on what to do here, but it only discusses when editors should/should not be added.

I just found a comment from Rivka back in 2008 that voted against adding them as authors. Instead they suggested adding it to the book description.

Interested in seeing what other Librarians/Goodreads staff think, and if the relevant manual page should be updated.

[gem]

Following up with an even more niche question -- if the author of the Afterword narrates their portion in the audiobook version, should they be added as an author in the narrator role?

In this case the author is listed as a narrator on the Amazon Audible page, after the main narrator.

[Tawnya]

Sometimes that Intro is several pages long.

Many of the anthologies I read have intros that are important to the book. They explain why it was made.

One of the series I cleaned up the last two books said "with a forward by". Reading that foreword allowed me to see that the author of it had actually finished writing those two books after his friend died. The main author knew he was dying and Craig promised him and the widow he would finish them. Again the books say he was just wrote the foreword. It reminded me of the 6th Hitchhiker's book. Douglass Adam's widow had a friend Douglass finish the "trilogy".

I figure anything that can aid in getting the correct book to the person is always better. More information is always the way to go.

[Drace]

If we're going by the importance of the introduction/afterword, then I think those contributors probably should be included in this case. The book in question is The Fetishist by Katherine Min, and it's being published posthumously. The introduction is from a friend and colleague of Min's talking about Min and her history with the book, and the afterword was written by Min's daughter about her mother's writing career and how the book was finally published.

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂]

I read through the post gem linked to.

I'm guessing that some time after 2008 the different role fields (translator,foreward, etc) were added, so I don't think this post helps much. (sorry gem!)

I will mention how very frustrating it is that group search isn't working properly.

For Drace's particular example I think it is like page counts where we take the word of a member with a copy in hand.

& I have another odd case.(& now I can't find it) An edition of The Gods Arrivehad a well known 20th century author down as the second author - no role. Shown the same on Amazon & Abebooks. No mention of this author on the publisher site. I left it but now think I should have deleted it & left an explanatory note. & unless the moderator rules differently I will do that.