This "author" needs help

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Firefox can be set to highlight as well, although just searching usually does the trick for me.

[Maria]

Rivka and Petra, that's the workaround I've been using too, but for authors with as many books as Morris, it's still easy to miss books that way, rather than if I could use the build-in search.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I agree that an OR search would be helpful.

[Richard]

I need help with this author, marked simply as "--" (two dashes).

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

The other one in latin script was-

"Enciclopedia della letteratura. Autori, Movimenti, Riviste, teorici, Critici, Forme, Generi. (Reliure inconnue)"

which, according to babelfish, is in Italian:

"Encyclopedia of the literature. Authors, Movements, Reviews, theorists, Critics, Forms, Kinds. (Reliure inconnue)"

(The last two words are French, for "unknown binding". The link at the bottom of the edit page indicates the book arrived via amazon.fr, where--sure enough--the auteur is listed as "--".

From worldcat and libr of cong I got the publisher as "Milano : Garzanti, 1997, ©1972." and that this is the third edition. A google search suggested that the volume was edited by Giuseppe Barile, et al.

Of course it had not ratings, no reviews, so would have been about as useful to just delete it? Anyway, I didn't know about this forum 'til last night (all my previous edits were untutored...)

Is there a guide somewhere regarding when it is acceptable to delete a book?

Oh, and a Google search of the second "--" entry (جاماسپ نامه) seems to indicate it is in Farsi (Persian).

[Cait]

There's a website ORCHARD.COM that apparently dumped a bunch of entries into the Amazon system (and, therefore, into Goodreads) with what looks like their internal tag numbers in the author field and possibly bogus ISBN numbers. There are about 300 of these (search for "cdorh") at the moment, and they're not all NOT-A-BOOK -- I found a couple of audiobooks doing other searches....

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Richard, please don't delete any valid books, especially (but not only) if they have ISBNs. Sounds like Giuseppe Barile should be listed as the author, with "editor" listed as role (in the separate role field).

Books are pretty much only deleted when they are duplicates (and then only AFTER they have been combined with the book they are a duplicate of, so all ratings/reviews get moved over to it, rather than lost), or if they are not actual books (ex., individual comic books or short stories, toys, calendars). In the latter case, if the item has an ISBN and is listed on Amazon, deleting it is useless (it will be recreated by the Amazon API), so we mark it as Not a Book.

[Richard]

In message 124: rivka said
Richard, please don't delete any valid books, especially (but not only) if they have ISBNs. Sounds like Giuseppe Barile should be listed as the author, with "editor" listed as role (in the separate role field).

That's what I'd done.

Re not deleting books. That seemed like the prudent course, but it's good to have it clarified.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

:)



Cait, yikes!

[Katherine]

These two people are the same authors:


Jeffrey Savage

and

J. Scott Savage

What do i do to combine them?

[Ubik]

Got a new one: SparkNotes Editor

Right now Im working through all the 'MobileReference' ones

[rivka, Former Moderator]

SparkNotes Editor almost certainly IS the correct author for most (or all) of those. SparkNotes (like the old Cliff Notes) are guides to books. The last thing we want is for those to get combined with the books they are notes to.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Katie, it looks like the author has published his YA books and his adult books under deliberately different names. My suggestion would be to NOT combine the two names. But you can check with him -- he's a GR author.

[Ubik]

Im not talking about combining them into the actual books, I was wondering WHO actually wrote these things. Is it always the same guy or set of people? We dont want to attribute these works to a 'person' instead of an entity?

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

Most guides like that are written by semi-anonymous teams... This is why some books have authors like "The Staff of XXXXX" or "The Editors of YYYY" without any actual names.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Ubik, if you can find authors, go for it. But as Michael says, that is often impossible.

[Sherry]

Another one name author

http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/...

[Petra X]

This author must have written every moment of the day. Anyone care to explore the very prolific Mr Parker?

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

[Petra X]

I looked up Mr Philip M. Parker and found that in fact he is the author of the 5,500+ books listed on Goodreads. In fact, Amazon says he is the author of about 85,000 books. He himself claims 200,000 different titles. Most of his books are e-books, print are print-on-demand and all are self-published.

Mr Parker's automated book-writing scripts are apparently adaptable and he plans to branch out into romance novels :-)

The mind boggles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_M...

[Ubik]

[raised eyebrows:]. Wow. Call me old-fashioned, but isnt that a *bit* much, and NO, I *wont* be working on that guy's profile anytime soon LOL. Yipes.

[Vitali]

Great Scott! 5598 books...
How did you find him, Petra?

[Petra X]

I was researching coconuts for tree varieties and cookbooks (I was researching making palm wine for a cultural product on the island) and up popped up his name. When I get a page on GR if I'm not too busy, of if I need distraction, I usually fix author's names, look up authors, combine books etc and there he was, the very prolific Professor Parker!

[Sherry]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

More authors that need work:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

These are all one name authors.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to indicate that some of the one name authors are, in fact, one name authors, vs. the ones that really have just been parsed or imported incorrectly?

I'm sure that sometimes we must be duplicating work.

Thanks.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

A brief description in the bio spot would probably help with those who are really one-name authors.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

While working on some of the already listed one-names, I found a bunch more. Apologies if any of these are repetitions:
Shapiro
Stein
Reyes
LEONARD
Hamon

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

At one time I was trying to keep a list of things like this. The list is still there, although I haven't updated it in a long time (I got swamped by the disambiguation list). Does anyone want to take over trying to keep track of these sorts of things?

It's a never-ending issue because some of the names will keep coming back, but it can sometimes help to have them all in one place...

[Lori]

HELP: I need a super-librian

I decided to work on "Quinn" from rivka message 142. One of the Quinns was Daniel Quinn, and the book was Ishmael. There are 7 versions of this book all without and ISBN but with 16 reviews between them.

My inclination is to merge them all to isbn ending in 5407 which has 7538 reviews. Can't though because of the number of reviews.

If I am correct, can someone please do it?

Lori

[rivka, Former Moderator]

You should have been able to delete all but one of them. And I left the one that has a cover (which is not a duplicate of any of the ones with ISBNs).

[Lori]

I got all the Quinns but 2. The books don't seem to exist anywhere but in Amazon's listing.

Lori

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Ya gotta love Amazon. ;) Good work!

[Lori]

Kesslers are done

Thanks rivka. All of them kept saying I needed a super - and you are indead that!!!!!!

[Lori]

By the way! Did you know that toward the bottom of the page for any book on Amazon there is:

"Feedback
If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide? Click here

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone. Please note that we are unable to respond directly to all feedback submitted via this form, but we'll ask you to sign in so we can contact you if needed."

If you click on "update product info" you can tell Amazon how to correct a record. They actually do pay attention. I subnitted corrections on all the Quinns and Kesslers I just did. They will send me an email telling me they got mine and then after they fix it the will send another telling me that I was correct and it has been fixed.

Just thought some might want to know.

Lori

[Corinne]

Collins1
COLLINS: BUSINE
Collins
Rodriguez
Walker R
Nelson & Lauren DeMille

Kingsley Widmer; Sesshu Foster; e. c. rire; Virginia Harabin; Guro Masaki; Kenzo Masaki; Yoko Tawada

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Collins needs a lot of work; I got the others.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Time to clear my tabs for the night. Apologies for any repetitions.
Carter
Crawford
Jackson
Anderson
john

[Lori]

Rose is done (see message 142)

Lori

[Lori]

Jarvis is done (see message 142)

Lori

[Lori]

Alexander is done (see message 142)

Lori

[mlady_rebecca]

If you click on "update product info" you can tell Amazon how to correct a record.

Last time I did this they never updated the product record.

[Lori]

Ran into something interesting when doing the Alexanders.

The top book in the list was one by Lloyd Alexander. And it showed both his first and last name. I opened the record to edit to see what was going on and checked the lib edit record and saw that someone had indeed changed it several days ago. But it was still showing up in the "Alexander" list. Not sure what was going on with it, I changed it back to Alexander, changed it to Lloyd, changed it to author xyz and nothing I did made it leave the Alexander list. So I just ignored it for a while. Later on I came to another book and it turned out to be Lloyd Alexander. Made the change and magically it disappeared from the Alexander list. So after I finished all the Alexanders I went back to my problem child.

I tried several things unsuccessfully, then finally went and looked at the list of editions of this title, there were 21 of them. And sure enough, 1 of them had both Lloyd Alexander and Alexander as authors. When I fixed it, the one that had been hanging around finally went away.

So what I learned was that a title (most reviewed edition)will show up in a list even though it doesn't have a problem itself if any of the other editions of that book does have a problem.

Did that all make sense?

Lori

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yeah, Lori, it does. And it's a huge problem with "William" and "Jane", because narrowing down WHICH of the 200+ editions of Shakespeare or Austen book is the culprit is a royal pain.

[Lori]

rivka - I kind of cheated - I separated them and the one with the problem of course popped up in the Alexander list. It's easier to re-combine then go through each one separately.

Lori

[rivka, Former Moderator]

True. But with Shakespeare and Austen I'd worry about losing the non-English editions if I separated them.

[Lori]

You don't see me volunteering to do them do you????????????? :) :) :)

[Vitali]

Michael, I can update the list of one name authors.

[Jim]

Stephen Brust should be deleted I think. He has no books & I believe the correct author is Steven Brust. I'm not sure how to do it, if I can or if I should.

Help, please.

[vicki_girl]

I was working on the single name authors, and came across the following book by 'Burns'

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20...

I have googled every way I can think to find it, but I'm coming up nil for a first name.

Someone else want to try?

[Vitali]

Jim, if the author has no books, you can merge his profile with any other author (you can merge it with Charles Dickens or with Mao Zedong) :))

vicki_girl, it was James Macgregor Burns

[Jim]

Thanks, vitalinew. The Stephen Brust had no books, so I merged him with Steven Brust. I got an error screen, but it seemed to work anyway.

I did the same thing with John Grisham. There were several variations that had no books. No errors with them.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I got an error screen, but it seemed to work anyway.

I had that several times yesterday. Weird, but since it works anyway I haven't been too worried about it.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

More, and probably some duplicates.

Roy
Harrison
Jim
Black
Henry