Combining author profiles & merging book entries

[Purr More]

Just recently got librarian status so I am slowly getting accustomed to things. I came across a second profile for an author due to incorrect spelling of her name and tried to combine the profiles as outlined in the manual. I got an error message saying something about only authors can edit their data or librarians. So why did it not let me combine the profiles? Is this something only a superlibrarian can do? These are the profiles in question.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... (this is the correct spelling)

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/... (this is the incorrect spelling)

As a result of the two profiles there is also a duplicate book listing that needs to be merged.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/71...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/69...

I haven't dipped my toes into combining entries yet and the manual isn't that clear about it. Is there a better step-by-step guide somewhere?

[Lisa]

Michelle, It's because the author (with the correct spelling) is a Goodreads author member.

The workaround is to take any books under any incorrectly spelled name and change the name on the individual books. Then, you can go to the author and combine any books that need combining.

[Lisa]

I got this one. The manually added book with the incorrect spelling needed to be deleted after combining.

[Purr More]

okay, thanks. Maybe that is something that could be added to the manual.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Now that we have so many Goodreads Authors, that's a good point.