Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Author name question
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Questions really don't belong in this folder. Perhaps you would like to move the question to the proper folder to get more responses.A simple approach would be to treat FirstnameLastname as a pen name. We have pretty clear guidelines about those.
David wrote: "Questions really don't belong in this folder. Perhaps you would like to move the question to the proper folder to get more responses.A simple approach would be to treat FirstnameLastname as a pen ..."
I noticed I put this thread in the wrong folder and moved it just before you posted your reply. My mistake!
If any other librarians want to take a look at this and provide input, it would be much appreciated.
Drace wrote: "..how should getting all of these works on the same author page be handled?"As David replied, GR already has very clear policy on this which you can read here->
https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...
How the author chooses to handle their different pen names and whether they want them combined or not is up to them, not anybody else.
Agreed, but there's two points to consider:1. Can it really be considered a pen name if it's just your name with a space in it vs. without a space? It's not a Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb situation, it's more like NoraRoberts and Nora Roberts.
2. The author in question hasn't logged into Goodreads in over a year and from what I can tell the vast majority of the books listed on the Firstname Lastname (with a space) profile were imported from Amazon by the bot, so she hasn't been handling the profiles at all.
I appreciate the input already received, but since this is kind of an odd situation, if any librarians with a lot of experience handling author pages would like to provide further input it would be very much appreciated.
As David said in Msg 2, JaneDoe would be treated as a pen name. If she republishes a book under Jane Doe that she originally published as JaneDoe, JaneDoe would be the primary author and Jane Doe would be the secondary author. That would put the book on both pages.Since the Jane Doe page isn't a claimed page, a librarian could add a note to the page indicating that "Jane Doe also writes as JaneDoe," with an imbedded link to the claimed profile.
Make sense? That's how we handle situations like this when they arise.
Dobby wrote: "As David said in Msg 2, JaneDoe would be treated as a pen name. If she republishes a book under Jane Doe that she originally published as JaneDoe, JaneDoe would be the primary author and Jane Doe w..."Thanks for the explanation, it very much helps. I guess if the author logs back on and wants to, she can get her pages merged/name edited.
Would you rather I start a separate thread to get the name clarified on both profiles and move a book from one page to the other, or would it be alright to post the request here?
Post urls to the two profiles and I'll add the links.
gem wrote: "Post urls to the two profiles and I'll add the links."https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Thank you!
Added a link on Bitter Karella (the unclaimed profile) to BitterKarella (the claimed profile).
gem wrote: "Added a link on Bitter Karella (the unclaimed profile) to BitterKarella (the claimed profile)."Much appreciated!
An author self-publishes a couple of books using her online handle, which is a first name and last name together as one word (FirstnameLastname). She claims this as her Goodreads author page. Later on, she starts getting short stories published in anthologies and has a novel coming out this year. These are published under the first name and last name of the online handle, but split up (Firstname Lastname). A separate author page is created for this name variation, and it is not claimed as an author page.
Because the latter page has the more accurate name that's been used across more material, but the former page is claimed by the author and I believe that means it's locked from editing: how should getting all of these works on the same author page be handled?